by Charles
Threatening another TV network that dares to confront a socialist dictator, which is exactly what Hugo Chavez has done.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday called opposition news channel Globovision an enemy of the state and said he would do what was needed to stop it from inciting violence, only days after he shut another opposition broadcaster.
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in Caracas in a fourth consecutive day of protests over Chavez’s closure of the RCTV network – a move which has sparked international criticism that the leftist leader’s reforms are undermining democracy.
State television showed hundreds of government supporters marching in downtown Caracas celebrating Chavez’s decision.
"Enemies of the homeland, particularly those behind the scenes, I will give you a name: Globovision. Greetings gentlemen of Globovision, you should watch where you are going," Chavez said in a broadcast all channels had to show.
"I recommend you take a tranquilizer and get into gear, because if not, I am going to do what is necessary."
More below the fold.
Why is Chavez so upset? My take is that Globovision is the only network televising the anti-Chavez protests. How dare such a network exercise its right to free speech. The pro-Chavez networks, both government and privately owned, have blacked out these anti-Chavez events, preferring to show shiny happy socialists. The Devil’s Excrement:
Remarkably, there were little news from other sources. Many websites were down, either because they had too much traffic or were being attacked, while the other TV stations, Government or private, paid little attention to what was happening in the streets. But Globovision did and it included coverage of a pro-Chávez demonstration which was so ‘spontaneous" that most people had red t-shirts on with the printed logo of the new Government TV station that is replacing RCTV. Even more cynical, while anti-Government protestors were being gassed for blocking streets, metropolitan police led and protected the pro-Chávez march in downtown Caracas which had no permit, showing once again the double standard being used by the Government. By the end of the day, rumors were strong that Globovision would be shut down for three days as a way of "cooling" the streets. I really hope they do it so that, the beginning of the Chavez Dictatorship can be ratified and made official.
The Caracas Chronicles:
Curiously, the "public service" TV station that has just taken over Channel 2’s signal hasn’t broadcast any news so far about the protests taking place all over the country against the blow to free expression that was taking RCTV off the air.
But it’s not just TVES, none of the state run channels, or the private ones that have lined up behind the government, such as Venevisión, has reflected on their screens what has been happening on the streets.
The blackout – one-sided information or zero information – has become a government policy. To ignore all that isn’t convenient is the line handed down to the salaried journalists and parasitic businessman: only pre-approved propaganda is accepted. The media outlets that refuse to follow this order are pressured impudently, through their advertisers. Companies that buy advertising space get called, threatened and blackmailed.
How much easier it will be for Chavez’s Bolivarian goon squads to crack some heads without the glare of the cameras watching. I predict that it won’t be long before the blogs and Internet sites are targeted. Perhaps YouTube has come none too soon but maybe not. After all, months ago Chavez announced that he will nationalize the telecom industry. Finally, a word from Reporters Without Borders:
Reporters Without Borders today called for international condemnation of President Hugo Chávez’s decision not to renew the licence of Venezuela’s oldest TV station, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), which was finally forced to stop broadcasting at midnight last night.
"The closure of RCTV, which was founded in 1953, is a serious violation of freedom of expression and a major setback to democracy and pluralism," the press freedom organisation said. "President Chávez has silenced Venezuela’s most popular TV station and the only national station to criticise him, and he has violated all legal norms by seizing RCTV’s broadcast equipment for the new public TV station that is replacing it."
Reporters Without Borders continued: "The grounds given for not renewing RCTV’s licence, including its support, along with other media, for the April 2002 coup attempt, are just pretexts. Other privately-owned TV stations that supported the coup attempt have not suffered the same fate because they subsequently adopted a subservient attitude towards the regime."
Directly or indirectly, President Chávez now controls almost all the broadcast media. RCTV’s closures is not, as he would have people believe, a mere administrative measure. It is a political move designed to reinforce his hegemony over the news media.
RCTV is the NBC of Venezuela. That’s how big a deal this is. Ironic that a leader so concerned with American hegemony is so eager to exercise the same over his own countrymen. A case of projection perhaps?
How dare such a network exercise its right to free speech.
People – via the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and constitutionally in certain countries have a right to free speech, the degree to which that is absolute varying from place to place. Broadcast media, on the other hand, is regulated pretty much all over the world: the government grants a licence.
This is all beside the fact that the station closures clearly undermines the principles of free expression and democracy.
“RCTV is the NBC of Venezuela.”
This is an inapt comparison, given the comparative records.
Your post is problematic to respond to overall, because on the one hand, my opinion of Chavez is far more negative than positive, and I heartily disapprove of a vast number of his practices, to the point of condemning many, and I’d scarcely want to cast myself as any sort of defender of him.
However, your post is so wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest, no mention of any genuine grievances of the rural and poor population, no mention of the historic lack of balance and political fairness in Venezuela before Chavez, no reference to the politicized nature, and anti-free-speech record of Globovision and other “opposition” tv stations, and on and on.
So completely absent, indeed, of any context whatever about Venezuela and its politics and history, is your post, that the overwhelming effect boils down to the point: Hugo Chavez: Utterly Evil Or Just Completely Evil?
Which is a terribly uninteresting discussion. But to attempt to balance your post with history and context would mean a lot of linking and writing, and it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.
But maybe someone else will be more enthused.
However, your post is so wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest, no mention of any genuine grievances of the rural and poor population, no mention of the historic lack of balance and political fairness in Venezuela before Chavez, no reference to the politicized nature, and anti-free-speech record of Globovision and other “opposition” tv stations, and on and on.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Yes, there has been a lot of injustice in Venezuela. That injustice in no wise excuses further injustices. The issue is not whether Chavez is a good guy or a bad guy. We should focus on actions, not personalities. We can praise the good that Chavez has done even as we condemn the evil. I believe that the good:evil ratio has been falling steadily since Chavez came into office.
My own problem with Charles’s post is different from Farber’s.
It’s that I don’t really much care *what* Chavez is doing. I figure the Venezuelans can sort matters out for themselves.
And on virtually any issue re: what America is doing, Charles’s judgment is not, shall we say, where I turn first, second, or third for guidance. So I’m even less inclined to credit whatever about Venezuela has his panties all wadded-up.
“no mention of the historic lack of balance and political fairness in Venezuela before Chavez, no reference to the politicized nature, and anti-free-speech record of Globovision and other “opposition” tv stations, and on and on. ”
Does the lack of poltical fairness in Venezuela before Chavez justify shutting down the last major opposition station?
Considering that major opposition stations (including pro-Chavez ones) were allowed to run before Chavez came to power, isn’t it worth noting that he has been shutting them down?
“with no nod to context in the slightest, no mention of any genuine grievances of the rural and poor population”
What grievances of the rural poor population in Venezuela justify effectively ending opposition free speech? You ask for context, but contextualizing it doesn’t help lead to the actions Chavez is actually taking.
“Charles’s judgment is not, shall we say, where I turn first, second, or third for guidance. So I’m even less inclined to credit whatever about Venezuela has his panties all wadded-up.”
This is why obsidianwings isn’t really worth doing anymore. So far as I can tell from the post, absolutely nothing in the post requires trusting Charles’ judgment.
Considering that major opposition stations (including pro-Chavez ones) were allowed to run before Chavez came to power, isn’t it worth noting that he has been shutting them down?
I think everyone has explicitly said so, yes. If I interpret Gary correctly he’s simply saying it would be a much more interesting / educational post if the local context had been given.
“Does the lack of poltical fairness in Venezuela before Chavez justify shutting down the last major opposition station?”
That’s not really the point. The moral relativists just need to nitpick Von… sorry I mean Charles.
Speaking of moral relativism….
Katherine and Hilzoy,
Thanks for all the posts about the Sunni’s who were being held by AQ in a torture chamber in Iraq and recently freed by U.S. soldiers. I appreciate you both taking the time to keep us all informed about what “real” torture and torturers looks like.
It’s great to see the outrage you both so often reserve for the US gov’t turned on our enemies.
I’m sure women all throughout the Islamic world can only admire the brave stance you girls take against murders of men, women and children. I’m sure they would applaud if only they had the freedoms so many of us enjoy.
I would have loved to read more about your thoughts on the Shia’s that were held, but I guess them being dead and all meant you didn’t have much to say.
(Keep up the good work at always trying to tear down the US and ignoring the real murders and terrorists. Your doing great so far.)
Seb, I agree somewhat with your reaction to Anderson’s comment, particularly when, of late, when Charles has posted, the informational/ideological ratio has risen a great deal.
However, I still feel obsidianwings is worth doing. True, the majority of commenters fall onto my side of the political fence, but I appreciate the comments of yourself and others form the other side.
I understand Gary’s point about context, but unless Globovision is doing something that is actively promoting unrest and a violent uprising, I consider the threat that Chavez has issued to be totally out of line.
But then again, the US has been known to shut down media that didn’t fall in line, although that was in Iraq.
This is why obsidianwings isn’t really worth doing anymore. So far as I can tell from the post, absolutely nothing in the post requires trusting Charles’ judgment.
The mere assertion that this is an event any more worthy of note than 1,000 other repressive things that happened yesterday, is an exercise of judgment.
As to whether OW is worth doing, I can’t really speak to that; elementary rhetoric, however, suggests explaining *why* what you’re saying deserves the attention of your audience. (A rule I can happily disregard at my own blog, b/c I don’t actually have an audience; but OW isn’t like that.)
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Indeed, they don’t, which would be more usefully pointed out if someone were arguing otherwise.
“Considering that major opposition stations (including pro-Chavez ones) were allowed to run before Chavez came to power, isn’t it worth noting that he has been shutting them down?”
Well, yeah, but that’s like, been on the front page of all the major newspapers, and on all the tv network news broadcasts. It’s not exactly an obscure story.
If Charles’ role is to skim the front pages of newspapers — or of conservative blogs — looking for topics where he can write a denunciatory post that will get applause at RedState, well, fine, and perhaps many here will benefit from that. Me, I actually read newspapers, and didn’t learn anything about the situation from Charles’ post.
But I’m not claiming to give anything other than my personal perspective and opinion. Charles is perfectly entitled to write a post on whatever he likes, in whatever manner and style he likes, and as a commenter, I’m entitled to, within the bounds of the posting rules and decency, say that I found it to be an unbalanced, un-edifying, post. Just as everyone else is entitled to praise and criticize as they like, and give Charles a standing ovation, if that’s the consensus.
“So far as I can tell from the post, absolutely nothing in the post requires trusting Charles’ judgment.”
One doesn’t have to trust that — or alternatively, question whether — Charles is presented a sensibly balanced set of facts, in a context that brings adequate understanding of the overall situation?
Obviously, my view is that Charles didn’t do a very good job of this, in this case — and there have been times I’ve felt that Charles did a fine job of presenting a lot of information relatively fairly, so I know that at times, on some subjects, it’s within the realm of possibility — but if I was a reader who knew nothing, or very little, about Venezuela, I would come away from this post — it is my opinion — with a completely unbalanced, ill-informed, perspective on the situation there that would overall tend to lead me to unbalanced conclusions if I didn’t know better.
You’re perfectly entitled to take a different view, of course, but, yeah, I think that much of the post requires either trusting that Charles is well-informed and presenting a picture that gives an uninformed reader the basic knowledge they need to know, or questioning that trust, and possibly finding that Charles has presented a highly distorted, out-of-context, one-sided, set of facts, because he has a huge political ax to grind.
But maybe no trust is involved: maybe Charles is infallible. How would it work that you should listen to someone, and no trust in their judgment being involved, you don’t trust them, but you should still not question them, but simply believe them?
This is a serious question: I don’t understand the premise that there’s no trust involved in reading someone presenting a bunch of claims and assertions, no matter how correct or incorrect they may be. It seems to me that trust in the other person’s judgment is always involved when people are dealing with each other’s opinions.
hmm. i liked the post.
“You ask for context, but contextualizing it doesn’t help lead to the actions Chavez is actually taking.”
You may have missed the whole “my opinion of Chavez is far more negative than positive, and I heartily disapprove of a vast number of his practices, to the point of condemning many, and I’d scarcely want to cast myself as any sort of defender of him” part of what I wrote.
“You may have missed the whole “my opinion of Chavez is far more negative than positive, and I heartily disapprove of a vast number of his practices, to the point of condemning many, and I’d scarcely want to cast myself as any sort of defender of him” part of what I wrote.”
Nope didn’t miss it, it just seemed 100% irrelevant to the rest of your comment. It was a “yes, but” argument. Let’s listen to you on the topic:
This combines with:
Now I happen to have been following the situation fairly closely and frankly I’m unaware of any useful ‘context’ that adequately explains shutting RCTV or Globovision down, much lest justifies it. You strongly imply that there is such a useful context–at least as far as explaining it, if your “yes, but” is intended to show that you don’t think it is justified. You mention in passing the plight of the poor in Venezuala, but don’t link it to the shut-down of television stations in any logical fashion. I suspect the poor under Mugabe aren’t too thrilled about his rule, and increasingly that looks like the path that Chavez is determined to tread (see especially his idiotic attempt at price controls on food–it caused shortages, who could have ever guessed that would happen?).
Bril: please attempt to tone it down a touch or comment at places where content free attacks are welcome. I think one of the key problems in the current state of obsidianwings is a failure to police members of your own side. While I’m loathe to accept that you are vaguely, kind-of on my side, I feel it is necessary to pay attention to you.
You aren’t helping the discussion, you aren’t being logical, and so far as I can tell all you want to do is unfairly attack Hilzoy and Katherine. They write on important issues, and they can’t write on everything at once. If you occassionally want to raise counterpoint issues on pertinent topics, I suppose that is fine, but doing it on this thread suggests that you are just interested in being a jerk.
Which is a terribly uninteresting discussion. But to attempt to balance your post with history and context would mean a lot of linking and writing, and it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.
Whatever, Gary. I’ve written in previous posts that Chavez has done some helpful things, that the pre-Chavez era was no utopia, and that the current opposition is oftentimes dysfunctional and little better than the current regime, but I don’t see the need to do it in every single post on the subject, and I have no obligation to anyone, including you, to insert some arbitrary notion of “balance”, where balance can mean different things to different readers.
The more important issue to me is the systematic power-grab that Chavez has undertaken becoming el presidente, with each new incident taking away another freedom and amassing his control of affairs, so that’s what I chose to write about. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s way more relevant to note that the UDHR in Venezuela are being trampled right before our very eyes than to credit Chavez for teaching children to read his manifestos or give out some 50-year primer on the life and times of Venezuela or whatnot. If that turns out to be uninteresting to you or anyone else, well, I guess I’ll just have to live with that.
This is why obsidianwings isn’t really worth doing anymore.
Amen.
Just when I was feeling left out of all those attacks all the other girl bloggers apparently get that focus on their gender, along comes bril to set things right.
“Now I happen to have been following the situation fairly closely and frankly I’m unaware of any useful ‘context’ that adequately explains shutting RCTV or Globovision down, much lest justifies it.”
“You strongly imply that there is such a useful context”
No, I did not. I stated overtly that there is a vast amount of useful context that Charles didn’t even hint at that is necessary to understanding the overall situation.
I specifically disclaimed making any defense of Chavez. Any claims that I was or am in some way defending Chavez are purely made up.
I wrote that Charles’ lack of context in presenting his information made for “a terribly uninteresting discussion.”
I don’t see how this can be read as “implying” that the tv station shut down is in any way “justified.”
I wrote that “to attempt to balance your post with history and context would mean a lot of linking and writing, and it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.”
It should be perfectly clear that any attempt to read into that, or anything else I wrote, an “implication” that I’m “justifying” Chavez’s actions is purely an act of imagination.
Given the context of Chavez being characterized as a “leftist dictator, the claim that I’ve “justified” his acts is in the neighborhood of a McCarthyite-type libel, and I would be appreciative if you would withdraw the claim.
Gary — I’m not sure it’s fair to critique Charles for providing insufficient context. A number of hilzoy’s and Katherine’s posts, for instance, could be boiled down to Guantanamo Bay: Utterly Evil Or Just Completely Evil? (Check the Torture and Detention tag for examples.) As far as I can tell, no one but bril has objected. (And thanks to SH for his efforts in that direction.)
I’ve tried to assess what was unsatisfying to me about the post. It’s on a topic that has not been extensively discussed on this blog, so we don’t have a communal history with it. Though lots of good information was presented, I felt something was missing in the wrap-up to lead off a productive discussion … as we are seeing in the results, I might observe. I can’t specify what could have been done differently, but maybe someone else can propose a launching point.
A number of hilzoy’s and Katherine’s posts, for instance, could be boiled down to Guantanamo Bay: Utterly Evil Or Just Completely Evil?
I’d have to disagree with that characterization. If anything hilzoy and Katherine have – over the course of years – provided a mountain of context on that particular subject.
“Though lots of good information was presented, I felt something was missing in the wrap-up to lead off a productive discussion”
I think it’s necessary to write a little about the political and historical context prior to and surrounding Chavez in Venezuela, to accurately describe and analyze the present political situation in Venezuela. It’s not as if Chavez arrived in a well-functioning polity with a society without serious inequity, and huge legitimate grievances by the lower classes, and suddenly started ruining things because he’s just an arbitrarily irrational guy.
But one would never know anything I just mentioned in my previous sentence, let alone numerous other critical facts, from Charles’ presentation. That’s what’s lacking, in my opinion. But I don’t want to hammer the point any further, since, no, as I started out saying, I don’t feel like making the effort to write a well-rounded, even short, analysis of the Venezuelan situation as a corrective; there are plenty out there, after all.
And as Randy Paul — who actually knows what he’s talking about on the topic — says:
Neither side has behaved in a non-appalling way much of the time.
I always have this vague feeling that I’m being played whenever someone starts going on about Chavez. There are a great many bad guys in the world. Why does the right wing have a bee in its bonnet when it comes to Venezuela, but not, say, Myanmar?
I accept that Chavez has done a number of bad things. What I don’t get is why it should be a major concern to me as an American, aside from the fact that Chavez is a Man Of The Left and thus some people find it necessary to document his every move.
“It should be perfectly clear that any attempt to read into that, or anything else I wrote, an “implication” that I’m “justifying” Chavez’s actions is purely an act of imagination.”
I distinguished between justifying and explaining. You clearly want more explanation. That is what complaining about lack of ‘context’ means. It is a strange complaint when you don’t appear to have any particular type of ‘context’ in mind.
Again, I’m unaware of any explanatory ‘context’ that is required in this situation. And unexplanatory ‘context’ is more like what bril introduces, so I certainly hope that isn’t what you are asking for.
Steve, Myanmar is not providing US a significant chunk of its oil imports. And the generals don’t go around making disparaging remarks about Our Leader. And maybe for some, the Myanmar generals are on the side of good, against a populist rabble demanding democratic changes.
And I did agree with Charles’ post, in a context-free non-nitpicking way. First time for everything, I think. Thanks, Charles.
How about a discussion of when did different people start thinking that Chavez had jumped the shark?
I wouldn’t have written the post the way that Charles did but I don’t see it as problematic in the way that some seem to. If you have additional context at the ready, Gary, I’d be interested; otherwise, I’m not really sure what your point is.
[I totally agree with Steve’s vague befuddlement — ok, my vague befuddlement as summarized by Steve — about why Chavez is singled out for such condemnation, but I think that’s orthogonal to the main point here.]
I think that much of the post requires either trusting that Charles is well-informed and presenting a picture that gives an uninformed reader the basic knowledge they need to know, or questioning that trust, and possibly finding that Charles has presented a highly distorted, out-of-context, one-sided, set of facts, because he has a huge political ax to grind.
I don’t agree with this, and don’t think the criticism of the post is justified. Charles is presenting facts quoted from Reuters, among other sources. He’s not just making factual assertions on his own authority. Some may find this information uninteresting, or already so well-known as to not be worth repeating. I don’t.
Chavez gets a lot of press and, let’s face it, is admired in some circles for criticizing the US. To talk about other aspects of his rule is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I see no reason why a comprehensive analysis of Venezuelan politics is needed to post about these incidents.
Excellent post, Charles. Try to ignore the folks who can’t seem to get past their own partisanship.
This is why obsidianwings isn’t really worth doing anymore.
Amen.
I am beginning to come around to this view as well. Grudgingly.
Just to repeat the gist of what others have said: Charles did not provide a comprehensive outlining of the context in which Chavez is. Perhaps others might have written a more comprehensive story with introduction and background links — but Charles doesn’t normally write entries like that (although he has written them in the past, when pressed). That’s all ok.
I have dark beliefs about why Chavez was first raised to prominence as a boogeyman, but certainly there are some aspects of his reign that are troublesome. Of course, for things done in the US, we have all been assured by some people that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” and sedition is a treasonable offense, so I’m sure they’re not worried about what the Decider in Venezuela is reluctantly forced to do.
Lastly, Charles makes a very big claim as a small part of his argument. Corporations do not have rights; that includes free speech. Persons have rights. It might not matter much in this case, but corporations are arbitrary assemblages of people under the law… there’s nothing intrinsic about them.
Is it just me, or was the wish for more context simply a minor point, one which has nothing to do with partisanship.
This is why obsidianwings isn’t really worth doing anymore.
Amen.
I am beginning to come around to this view as well. Grudgingly.
Now wait a minute. Two commenters make negative remarks about the post, and there are a couple of other quibbles and suddenly it’s all left-wing groupthink and beating your head against the wall and so on?
That seems extreme.
Brian,
Persons have rights, and persons make up Corporations. It is intrinsic.
So now von thinks that ObWi is being ruined by Rabid Leftist Gary Farber? I can only come to that conclusion based on his crack about “folks who can’t seem to get past their own partisanship.” Gary is the only one who complained, therefore von concludes that he must be doing so out of partisanship? (And gets pluralized in the bargain.) Help me out, here, von. Talk me through this one.
Gary has, in the past, certainly been critical of Charles’ posts, usually on the basis of facts, context, etc. Are you really — REALLY — chalking it up to partisanhip?
Jesus F. Christ. If anything, that’s why ObWi isn’t worth doing anymore. Certain posters seem to hate being held to account for what they write. If you really detest it that much, I’m sure there’s someplace you can find a yes-man audience on the Internet.
There is a thing called corporate free speech and it has been expanded as have many corporate “person” rights.
I’m sorry to see a crisis of confidence going on around here. I always found this a pretty solid, even-tempered place to pick up some perspective and prick up some interest for further thought and research. That’s all I need. Thanks to all the contributors.
I know next to nothing about Venezuela, but I’ve actually been to Myanmar (and studied and lectured on it). So:
Myanmar is not providing US a significant chunk of its oil imports.
Just wait. At least one US company is involved (over various populist protests) in trying to exploit Myanmar’s oil, which has been on the international market for over a century now, IIRC. The only question is whether we can outbid China and Japan for it.
And the generals don’t go around making disparaging remarks about Our Leader.
Susmariaosep!! We’re back to FDR (or Cordell Hull, or someone) on Somoza (or Trujillo, or someone): “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” I had hoped we had progressed somewhat further in our critique of morality over the last half-century-plus.
And maybe for some, the Myanmar generals are on the side of good, against a populist rabble demanding democratic changes.
I hate to go all Godwin on you, but for some Hitler was on the side of good, against a populist rabble with Jewish-Communist-homosexual-decadent tendencies.
A case might be made for singling out Chavez and Venezuela for particular opprobrium, among the world’s despicable leaders. But it’s going to be really really hard to make that case if your counter-example is Myanmar.
It seems possible (on reflection) that you – kvenlander – may have intended this whole thing ironically. If so, just regard this as a clumsy effort to make explicit what you cunningly left implicit. But I have to say that since I don’t “know” you, in the sense of having read many of your comments before, I can’t afford to assume this, and if you’re even remotely serious, your argument needs to be swiftly rebutted.
“So now von thinks that ObWi is being ruined by Rabid Leftist Gary Farber?”
Let me help: Smash the Gang of Four! To rebel is justified! Comrade Mao Zedong is the greatest Marxist-Leninist of the modern age! Warriors love reading Chairman Mao’s books most! The sunlight of Mao Zedong Thought illuminates the road of the Great Proletarian Revolution! I’m a battlefield hero as well as a labor hero! Everyone come to kill sparrows! Eliminate The Four Pests! The life of the peasants is good after land reform! Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius! Carry on the struggle to the end to strike against the right deviationist wind! Turn philosophy into a sharp weapon in the hand of the masses! Earnestly study the theory of the dictatorship of the proletatiat!
I accuse Von of being a rightist deviationist!
See, it turns out Von was correct! I’m pretty darn leftist.
Now to fetch that dunce-cap we make rightist deviationists wear when we have the ObWi self-criticism sessions known as “comment threads.”
Von is probably a landlord, as well as a counter-revolutionary bourgeois imperialist reactionary renegade, traitor, scab, and running dog puppet!
I’d like to take the opportunity to thank Gary for providing context and nuance. The idea that Gary’s response is partisan is laughable.
I’ll be the partisan here. Suppose NBC helped organize a months-long strike against the administration of a U.S. president, and then showed over and over manipulated footage that made it look as if supporters of the president were firing on a demonstration (but in fact were being fired on from a mostly empty street and buildings nearby), cheered on a coup, and refused to show footage of the president restored to office by popular demonstrations… would the broadcast license be renewed? I think not. Of course, we’d have FCC hearings: process.
Chavez, if he were smarter, should have a process too. But in fact he’d be making it up, since there isn’t an established judicial or administrative process to handle a station’s appeal against failing to renew their license.
In April 2002, I felt as if I were reliving the worst periods of my life. Then, when the military and people of Venezuela defeated the coup, I was euphoric with relief. I didn’t have a moment’s doubt about who was promoting and funding the anti-Chavez campaign that I’d been documenting for a year or more: the NED, the IRI, and the Iran-Contra alumni that were all over the Bush administration.
But, just as terrorism like blowing over the twin towers unites a nation behind an increasingly unpopular idiot president, an attempted coup hands an autocrat the excuse he needs to crack down.
I’ve been around the track. I don’t think Hugo Chavez is any kind of liberal. But RCTV is the voice of the oligarchy, which organized and fomented the coup of 2002. Reporters Without Borders has compromised itself fatally by taking money from the U.S.-government-funded NED. My criticism of the shutdown is entirely procedural, not substantive.
Persons have rights, and persons make up Corporations. It is intrinsic.
Are the people who made up Globovision being arrested for exercising free speech, or has Globovision merely had it’s license revoked (which, per above, I think is undemocratic)?
There is a thing called corporate free speech and it has been expanded as have many corporate “person” rights.
But we’re talking about Venezuelan law and/or any international treaties Venezuela has signed. There may be “corporate person rights”, but I couldn’t say.
OutOfContext, I’m aware of the concept. But I think it’s taken way too far (at least in the US ; I don’t know to what extent the concept has been developed in Venezuela) — a corporation has a certain amount of free speech rights by virtue of being composed of individuals — but the corporation is a created entity, and does not have intrinsic rights.
“I’d like to take the opportunity to thank Gary for providing context and nuance.”
Appreciative as I am of the sentiment, I have to note that I merely complained that Charles didn’t provide context or nuance I regard as necessary to sufficient minimal understanding, and then was too lazy to provide any of it in substantive form.
“…but the corporation is a created entity, and does not have intrinsic rights.”
Are you speaking of philosophical/moral rights, or legal rights?
Certainly corporations have certain legal rights in America. Whether they should or should not has been debated ever since 1886 and Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company decided, as I understand it, that under the 14th Amendment, corporations had legal rights. Debate continues.
Nell beat me to it and then some. I’ve been reading leftwingers who said that RCTV had been cheerleading the coup in 2002, but I haven’t tried to verify this. If it’s true, ask yourself how long an American television network would be allowed to operate if it had done the same thing.
Which doesn’t mean I’m a fan of Chavez either. I’m with Gary on this. (Not only on the substance, but also on the laziness.)
Philosphical/moral rights. Legal rights are entirely a matter of law … I rather suspect that whatever Chavez has done, it would not be found illegal by a Venezuelan court under Venezuelan law. As far as I can tell, he refused to renew the broadcast license,which seems likely to be in the Executive Branch’s powers.
I freely admit I don’t know a lot about Venezuelan politics; but I am struck by another reminder of domestic US politics, though, in some of the claims
that were made about firing US attorneys, in essence: “If it’s in the president’s power to do this, then it doesn’t matter why he did it.” (h/t Glenn Greenwald ).
Background.
A somewhat leftist perspective critiquing the Venezuelan opposition media can be found here, if you then click on “background” and then on “media.” Mind that I am not endorsing their version, or in any way asserting that any specific assertion of theirs is True. It’s merely an example of some of the different perspectives that a rounded report might include.
Then there’s this, and the attached links at the bottom.
Again: this is in no way to justify, or in any way to defend Chavez’s shutting down of the tv stations.
I merely think that comparing RCTV to NBC is ludicrous, and I don’t see how anyone remotely knowledgeable of Venezuela could possibly honestly make that claim, absent NBC overtly working to overthrow G. W. Bush in a military coup, which I suppose it’s possible Charles feels isn’t far from the truth, though I’ve seen no evidence that he’s drunk that particular kool-aid.
And, of course, the coup actually happened, although it didn’t last long, in Venezuela, though I’ve missed one taking place here.
As I said, neither side in Venezuela is admirable. That’s worth pointing out someone is when denouncing one side, and one side only, no matter how deserving that one side is.
I’d say the same of anyone explaining why Hugo Chavez is wonderful, and everything he does is justified, or who only posts a lot of information about the questionable doings of the Venezuelan opposition and media, but says not a single negative thing about Chavez.
Those would both be highly misleading summaries.
I realize that the BBC is a terrorsymp anti-American product of European socialism, but I note that here the writer states as a point of fact that: “Many media outlets, including RCTV, supported a bungled coup in 2002 and a devastating general strike in 2003 that failed to unseat the president,” for what it’s worth.
Did NBC also do something comparable?
Gary,
Thanks for the mention and the kind words.
There are few things that I find more detestable and unpleasant than writing about Chávez on my own blog.
I have a bit of experience having worked for nearly 20 years with broadcasters and acquainted myself with a better than average non-lawyers knowledge of what it usually takes to lose one’s FCC license or to have a petition to deny go in the favor of the petitioner (Publius, please feel free to chime in on this and correct me if need be).
I know of no one losing a license renewal despite plenty of petitions to deny. The only instances I am aware of someone actually getting their existing license cancelled was in the case of Michael Rice who owned radio stations in Missouri and Indiana and was convicted of sexual assault against minors.
In addition to the administrative law hearing cancelling the licenses, Rice also appealed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but was denied and the clincher for the FCC revocation was the nature of his crime.
The important distinction is this: the revocation of Rice’s licenses was not a decision effected by the executive branch, but by an independent agency. In my opinion, the procedure was unfair and I don’t believe that whether or not RCTV was a cheer leader for the coup is reason enough to deny a license renewal. Active participation in the coup would be, but if that were the case, there is a remedy for that: arrest, indictment and trial. To my knowledge n o one in the management of RCTV has been convicted of involvement with the coup.
“In my opinion, the procedure was unfair and I don’t believe that whether or not RCTV was a cheer leader for the coup is reason enough to deny a license renewal.”
Agreed. Thus my refusal to defend Chavez, and if I haven’t been clear, I utterly and unreservedly condemn his actions against Venezuelan media, and not just in the case, but in a long history of his abuse of the media over many years now, which is but a part of his many years of arbitrary abuse of power in general, all of which I thorough condemn and oppose.
Nell,
Regardless of whether RSF accepted money from NED (I might add that the public organizing the “NO” vote against Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite also received valuable financial support from NED, so it’s not ipso facto a bad thing), Human Rights Watch, AI , The Inter-American Press Association and The Committee to Protect Journalists have all come out against Chavez’s position in this.
By the way, for some of the most balanced and sensible comments I have read about Chávez, click here and scroll down.
If NBC cheered for a military coup staged against an American President, I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t lose their license.
Donald,
Given that it’s a hypothetical, it’s probably hard to dissuade you, but I think that if you understood the process by which licensees were punished for their actions, you’d see that it would be highly unlikely.
Active participation in the coup would be a crime. Cheering it on would probably be argued as free speech. Think of the things that James Dobson and Jerry Falwell said during the Clinton presidency.
In any event, I find it somewhat hypocritical that Chavez would complain about a coup being committed against him as he committed one himself in 1992.
I’m not a fan of Chavez and I knew he was a coup-committer himself. As for the hypothetical, no, comparisons to what Falwell and Dobson said when there wasn’t a coup aren’t convincing to me. If some nutcases staged a coup against Clinton and NBC cheered it on–well, I think it’s the context that matters here.
I tried reading the HRW link and then went directly to HRW, but find that none of the reports I clicked on seemed to download. Don’t know what’s going on there–we got a new computer recently and it is light years ahead of our previous (7 year old) computer, but I could read HRW documents on that one.
“In any event, I find it somewhat hypocritical that Chavez would complain about a coup being committed against him as he committed one himself in 1992.”
I think it would be beyond many elected leaders who are far more saintly than Chavez to approve of people’s right to commit a coup against their government, even if they had supported, or led, one in the past. 🙂
Are there any examples of such politicians actually existing, or having existed, anywhere?
Perhaps we might consider Jefferson’s “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” to encompass such a position, but I remain doubtful that Jefferson would have approved of the right of someone to have removed him from the presidency by an unlawful coup.
“Don’t know what’s going on there–we got a new computer recently and it is light years ahead of our previous (7 year old) computer, but I could read HRW documents on that one.”
It wouldn’t be the hardware, but your browser, or some other software (security type, such as ad-blocker, download accelerator, or whathaveyou), causing the problem via some setting or other, if the problem is on your end.
Try to ignore the folks who can’t seem to get past their own partisanship.
FWIW, von, I don’t think you’re getting grilled because of partisanship per se; you’re currently getting grilled because no-one knows wtf point you’ve been trying to make.
I don’t think Gary is being partisan, he just has (thus far anyway) repeatedly complained….without a point. If you think there is ‘context’ needed to understand why Chavez should/did/might want to shut down opposition media, feel free to provide it. Since nearly every politician would love to be free from criticism, I don’t think I’ll find the ‘context’ particularly illuminating, but feel free to try.
But to whine about lack of context, without trying to provide it and without showing why it is neccessary, strikes me as deeply silly.
I’ll say this: I don’t think any context can defend the actions Chavez is taking with respect to the media. None of the actual ‘context’ available is pertinent to that. So from that point of view, a repeated plea for ‘context’ sounds like a mealy-mouthed defense if you can’t defend the need for ‘context’. Now from your history, Gary, I’m perfectly willing to believe that is not your intent. But what one intends to communicate and what is actually communicated is not always the same thing. I see no more reason to believe that ‘context’ is needed here than when bril whines that katherine and hilzoy aren’t paying attention to the ‘context’ of torture. They are paying attention to the context, and the context doesn’t help.
Sebastian, I’m not foolish enough to try to speak for Gary, but I almost posted a compact equivalent of some of his comments, and here’s what motivated me:
Context matters in the case of Chavez because he’s not acting in a vacuum. The US government endorses his overthrow, and has sponsored efforts at this. The station that got closed was part of one of the big efforts to overthrow him. I’ve been reading some recently about the history of the 1918 influenza, which inevitably leads to talking about wartime measures and crisis responses, and I’m forced to conclude that if there were a nation of five billion people (that is, one about as much larger than us as the US is larger than Venezuela) committed to our overthrow and underwriting rebellious groups within American society, our civil liberties would not survive intact.
Arguments about whether Chavez would be a nice man and, say, no more despotic than the Prime Minister of Sweden don’t enter into this. The fact is that he’s under the gun, and he has the example of Iraq to remind him that a motivated US is a destructive US…exactly as we would be in his situation. Charles keeps writing about Chavez and Venezuela as though there is no massive threat to the survival of Chavez’s government nor any massive backing for forces of corporate control and civil repression widely hated within Venezuelan society. That absence feels to me a lot like writing about the history of life in the Cretaceous era and the Tertiary era without ever actually mentioning that there was a mass extinction in there. It’s…not especially good for getting a sense of what’s driving events.
I for one am not in a position to fairly assess Venezuelan developments, and you’ll notice that I’m not attempting to say anything about them here. I do note that our own government has in the past had senior officials proposing the bombing of middle-of-the-road think tanks and attempting prior restraint, and in the current administration has tried to browbeat the government of Britain into supporting the bombing of television stations, without facing anything like that hypothetical hostile nation eleven or twelve times our size, which makes me skeptical of some of the dudgeon. It could well be that Chavez is qualitatively worse than we’d be in the same situation, but I am skeptical. (Which is to say, persuadable.)
CB: Perhaps YouTube has come none too soon.
This is richly ironic, since it was an independent video, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, that exposed the fabrications of RCTV and the other private channels, which all supported the 2002 coup and the rightist mobilizations that led up to it.
As a matter of fact, the video itself is on YouTube/Google Video.
I’m very glad that a large country with valuable resources is choosing an alternative to the U.S.-led economic system, a game rigged against the populations of most countries who participate. That doesn’t mean I don’t see Chavez’ caudillism, or approve of it. But the best way to create more space for Venezuelans to make legitimate criticisms of policy and process is to quit threatening and undermining his government.
George Bush and his little gang of contra retreads are a political gift to Chavez. I wish I thought any Democratic candidate for president would be much different. But no. Chavez’ big sin is to defy the neoliberal economic consensus, to organize and support other Latin American countries in ditching the IMF model. His anti-democratic actions hand Democrats the opportunity to denounce him, and every one of them will continue to support U.S. funding of organizations that work with his political opponents.
And such U.S. intervention is regarded as our right, and utterly normal, by the vast majority of ‘respectable’ pundits and pols.
Dang. Sorry about the links.
Official site for The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
TRWNBT on GoogleVideo.
extremely late follow-up to spartikus, at 3:55pm yesterday:
You’re right, and re-reading my post I realize I could have expressed myself better. I was trying to get to the point you made with my comment “It’s on a topic that has not been extensively discussed on this blog, so we don’t have a communal history with it.”
Thanks to the several posters who have shared their knowledge of recent opposition history in Venezuela — I was aware there was some funny business going on, but the … context … was very helpful.
But to whine about lack of context, without trying to provide it and without showing why it is neccessary, strikes me as deeply silly.
Personally, I find this entire back-and-forth about context, etc and how that couples into the lack of subjective effervescence of Charles’ post(s) extraordinarily tiresome. Normally I keep this sort of observation to myself, but since we’re all sharing how bored and disappointed we are with posts and the comments of others, I feel it’s my duty to feed the bonfire.
Or something. Irony, or meta; take your pick.
FWIW, von, I don’t think you’re getting grilled because of partisanship per se; you’re currently getting grilled because no-one knows wtf point you’ve been trying to make.
I was referencing the grilling Charles was getting, not my own grilling.
I thought people were actually providing some of the context Charles had left out–it’s highly uncharacteristic for Gary to just complain about lack of context and not provide it, but you’ll notice he started providing it by late last night.
I’m a little disappointed that Gary didn’t provide full context for his complaint about lack of context.
Well, there’s that, but I’m not sure the series would converge.
I’m a little disappointed that Gary didn’t provide full context for his complaint about lack of context.
I don’t understand…what’s this in context of?
Points I’m happy to grant:
Chavez has been issuing threats against the private media since the coup. Most have changed their editorial line and coverage since then, particularly after Chavez’ victory in the 2004 referendum. Intimidation or classic corporate-media awareness of which side the bread’s buttered on? Or both?
RCTV continued its pre-coup approach. Its license has not been renewed. I don’t know whether there’s anything like the first amendment in the Venezuelan constitution; there certainly is no body that works like the FCC.
RCTV’s physical assets have been expropriated and converted to a state-owned channel. Unlike many commenting here, I’m not unalterably opposed to expropriation in principle. In this case I believe it’s handing Chavez’ critics a big hammer, especially given that there is already one govt-run station. I’ve also heard nothing about compensation to RCTV.
Between the coup and the referendum, Chavez prosecuted very few of the coup participants. Four military officers who supported the coup were absolved by the Venezuelan Supreme Court in what HRW called a highly questionable decision. Chavez’ majority in the National Assembly responded to that decision by expanding the size of the Supreme Court from 20 to 32, passing a law to do so in May 2004 and then naming the new judges in December, after the referendum. The new court annulled the acquittals. I have no information on what happened next in terms of sentencing, etc.
It’s a deplorable and predictable cycle of hostility, intimidation, subversion, and hyped-up outrage — on both sides.
The people of Venezuela have in principle gained a lot more control over their communities and destiny during the Chavez years. In practice, too, in many cases. It’s an experiment I’d like to see continue, but it’s being endangered by the blowhard who set it in motion as well as by the traditional enemies of popular economic sovereignty.
One last unfashionable effort to respond substantively to Charles’ post:
What did Globovision broadcast that Chavez interpreted as a call for his assassination?
A former RCTV manager (and former Chavez spokesperson, now head of TeleSur), says:
I believe what Mr. Izarra is doing there is called ‘putting it in context’. {ducks, runs}
Let’s try this on: there’s a broadcaster that’s undermining our efforts in the Middle East. Funded by our enemies. What’s the proposed solution of Charles The Fighter For Freedom Of The Press?
Blow it up.
Quite simply, this station represents another front in the War Against Militant Islamism. The station’s content consistently espouses violence against Shiites, the Iraqi government and American forces.
For this reason, al-Zawraa should be destroyed.
This isn’t a push against free speech. After all, speech that incites violence is commonly restricted in First Amendment cases.
More often than not, the best way to fight the Information War is to respond with more and better information. However, in cases such as this one, where speech is used exhort Sunnis to kill Shiites, Iraqi government officials and American forces, shut it down. If the Syrian government refuses to cooperate, then they are committing an act of war against the United States (in my opinion), and the Coalition has every right to find the damn studio and launch a military strike against the al-Zawraa station.
How’s that for “context”?
“I thought people were actually providing some of the context Charles had left out–it’s highly uncharacteristic for Gary to just complain about lack of context and not provide it, but you’ll notice he started providing it by late last night.”
I have yet to see any ‘context’ provided by anyone on this thread that makes Gary’s charges of “your post is so wildly off-balance” or “One doesn’t have to trust that — or alternatively, question whether — Charles is presented a sensibly balanced set of facts, in a context that brings adequate understanding of the overall situation?” worthwhile as other than griping.
With the ‘context’ that has been provided, he sounds very much like bril when bril whines that it isn’t possible to talk about the evils of torture without going into depth on the evils of Muslim cultures, and the attacks of 9/11, and how wimpy Democrats are. None of those things excuse torture. None of the ‘context’ provided by those facts and assertions add much to the conversation about torture.
Using government power to outlaw unfavorable media attention is fascistic. Full stop.
Popular left leaning voices like Neiwert (and I use him by way of illustration, I’m so not getting sucked into another round of why I find him unconvincing) claim to detect fascism at even extremely roundabout hinting in the direction of journalists. Actually taking over the opposition TV station and turning it into a part of your party’s information organ should therefore be immediately noticeable as dangerous to those who think that freeish speech has an important role in good society.
In even semi-free countries it is a move that signals a very serious retreat from freedom. Like torture, there are very very few ‘contexts’ that make that ‘explainable’ in the sense of rendering it necessary to the discussion. Venezuala is not in that position.
“The people of Venezuela have in principle gained a lot more control over their communities and destiny during the Chavez years. In practice, too, in many cases. It’s an experiment I’d like to see continue, but it’s being endangered by the blowhard who set it in motion as well as by the traditional enemies of popular economic sovereignty.”
Things like this is why noticing Chavez’s moves toward fascism is important. He is taking his country down the same road as Mugabe, yet still gets things like the above.
As Bernard said: “Chavez gets a lot of press and, let’s face it, is admired in some circles for criticizing the US. To talk about other aspects of his rule is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”
More history and fun facts on the Venezuelan media, circa 2002, from a private media p.o.v.
Things like this is why noticing Chavez’s moves toward fascism is important.
I thought it was communism.
Anyways, this comment juxtaposed with Carleton’s 12:40 is quite illuminating.
Interesting Carleton, how do you think your ‘context’ applies.
Do you agree with the post on al-Zawraa, and therefore want to use it as a counter-example showing that repression is OK?
Or, do you disagree with it, suggesting that the the Chavez move might be bad?
Or maybe you want to analogize or distinguish the Venezualan case from “However, in cases such as this one, where speech is used exhort Sunnis to kill Shiites, Iraqi government officials and American forces, shut it down.” Perhaps you believe that negative portrayals of Chavez are similar or different from attempting to foment revolution and actually attempting to incite particular acts of violence.
Like Gary, you mention an interest in context but in fact provide no such thing. What context are you attempting to provide when you raise the facts you raise?
Are you aware that people are starving in Africa? Do you know that plants photosynthesize? Did you know that malaria is spread by mosquitos? Are you aware that Al-Qaeda is EVIL?
If you don’t link the information to the discussion, you aren’t actually providing ‘context’.
Yes, many Venezualan people are poor. What does that have to do with shutting down two opposition stations?
Yes, Chavez doesn’t like the US. What does that have to do with shutting down two opposition stations?
Yes, Chavez is admired by many for the limited fact that he is willing to use left-wing economic ideas (his tactics are of course regretable). What does that have to do with shutting down two opposition stations?
He attempted to engineer a coup and had a failed one against him. What does that have to do with shutting down two opposition stations?
He is attempting land reform in almost exactly the same way and with the same results as Mugabe. What does that have to do with shutting down two opposition stations?
Actually the last question is easy–he thinks that enacting his ruinous policies will be easier if no one can call him on it. But that is the expected context of shutting down opposition TV stations, so I don’t think it was the insightful ‘context’ Gary was talking about.
“I thought it was communism.”
While the philosophical differences between communism and fascism are striking, their actual practices remain very similar.
What I don’t get is why it should be a major concern to me as an American, aside from the fact that Chavez is a Man Of The Left and thus some people find it necessary to document his every move.
As I wrote here, Steve, it’s about oil and what Chavez is doing with those oil revenues. Venezuela has the 5th largest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela is the 4th largest importer of oil to the U.S., and U.S. oil purchases comprise 16% of their GDP. Our economies are inter-linked, like it or not, and we are in no small part subsidizing Chavez and his revolution because of our oil dependence.
“Things like this”? Could you elaborate a bit on that, Sebastian? I’m reluctant to interpret or paraphrase your comments when you’re available to clarify. Most people would not interpret the paragraph you quote as an endorsement of Chavez’ action.
It’s also difficult to see how my whole comment from which that paragraph is excerpted can be interpreted as any kind of effort to paper over or minimize this action against RCTV by the Chavez govt.
But I’m not going to pretend that I don’t support a lot of what Chavez is doing with the economy. I do. I can’t agree that Chavez is taking Venezuela down the same road as Mugabe has Zimbabwe.
He does show every sign of being a potential dictator (an elected, popular one). Further changes in the constitution, further efforts to keep himself as head of the party forever… these will be ominous signs.
In the interest of keeping the discussion grounded in fact: Chavez has shut down one opposition station. He has threatened another.
“I don’t think Gary is being partisan, he just has (thus far anyway) repeatedly complained….”
I complained once. I responded to further comments on what I said.
“without a point.”
I explained my point several times. Apparently if I explain again, I’m “complaining” excessively, but if I don’t explain again, I don’t have a point.
“If you think there is ‘context’ needed to understand why Chavez should/did/might want to shut down opposition media, feel free to provide it.”
Curiously, that’s why I wrote this, with several links. Then I added this, as well. Why are you telling me to do what I did yesterday?
“But to whine about lack of context, without trying to provide it and without showing why it is neccessary, strikes me as deeply silly.”
Whining about people not providing context, when they have, strikes me as deeply silly.
“I’ll say this: I don’t think any context can defend the actions Chavez is taking with respect to the media.”
I’ll say this, again: Charles’ post is problematic to respond to overall, because on the one hand, my opinion of Chavez is far more negative than positive, and I heartily disapprove of a vast number of his practices, to the point of condemning many, and I’d scarcely want to cast myself as any sort of defender of him.
And this, again: As I said, neither side in Venezuela is admirable. That’s worth pointing out someone is when denouncing one side, and one side only, no matter how deserving that one side is.
I’d say the same of anyone explaining why Hugo Chavez is wonderful, and everything he does is justified, or who only posts a lot of information about the questionable doings of the Venezuelan opposition and media, but says not a single negative thing about Chavez.
Those would both be highly misleading summaries.
And this, again: Agreed. Thus my refusal to defend Chavez, and if I haven’t been clear, I utterly and unreservedly condemn his actions against Venezuelan media, and not just in the case, but in a long history of his abuse of the media over many years now, which is but a part of his many years of arbitrary abuse of power in general, all of which I thorough condemn and oppose.
This is incredibly boring, but if you won’t read it the first time, and accuse me of things I’ve repeatedly denied, and then continue to ignore everything I’ve actually read, I don’t know what else to do, short of coming to your home or office, and sitting down, asking you to read what I wrote, and sitting there while we then discuss what I actually wrote, which your own responses otherwise ignore.
I’m also highly unthrilled with your turning to personal attacks, and accusing me of “whining.” This is unnecessary and quite unhelpful.
“Since nearly every politician would love to be free from criticism, I don’t think I’ll find the ‘context’ particularly illuminating, but feel free to try.”
Obviously, anything that isn’t an attack on Chavez is something you will find to be unnecessary “context.” Not everyone, however, agrees with your POV on that. Deal.
“He attempted to engineer a coup and had a failed one against him. What does that have to do with shutting down two opposition stations?”
One of the stations was cheerleading for the coup.
Anyway, I think this comment thread is functioning properly. Charles posts something, people think there’s relevant information that’s been left out, and they provide it. I for one know more about Venezuela than I did before because of it, thanks to Gary and Nell.
“As Bernard said: ‘Chavez gets a lot of press and, let’s face it, is admired in some circles for criticizing the US. To talk about other aspects of his rule is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.'”
Which would be relevant if anyone, at any time, anywhere, in this thread, had in any way, shape, means, or form, suggested that talking about Chavez’s crimes and abuses shouldn’t be talked about.
But that’s a completely false and scurrilous accusation, Sebastian, so why are you put that out there?
I’m not going to engage further with your attempts to smear people who disagree with you by claiming they are defending dictorial tactics and actions that they have endlessly said they condemn. These claims are outrageous, and I’m pretty damn offended that you keep making them, and keep accusing me of defending Chavez. Piss off.
we are in no small part subsidizing Chavez and his revolution because of our oil dependence
If we were to wean ourselves from oil, others would be there to subsidize Chavez and his revolution. But then U.S. critics could do so from a much less, erm, conflicted position.
The House of Saud’s not exactly presiding over a vibrant democracy. Venezuela still is, RCTV or no RCTV.
As for me, I try to fill up at Citgo when I have a choice.
Donald: One of the stations was cheerleading for the coup.
More than that: apparently, military officers taking part in the coup were appearing on that station and giving directions with regard to the coup.
And, to be accurate, Chavez didn’t shut that station down: but the station’s licence was due to expire this year, and Chavez has refused to renew it. That doesn’t strike me as being the worst thing any government has ever done.
Now, if Chavez had bombed the station’s headquarters, killing everyone working there, that would have been a war crime.
“Curiously, that’s why I wrote this, with several links. Then I added this, as well. Why are you telling me to do what I did yesterday?”
I’m asking why you think that those links were so NECESSARY as to attack Charles.
It is supremely ironic that you are now whining about me attacking YOU when I’ve done even less than what you did when you started attacking Charles.
I have yet to accuse of you of supporting Chavez. I’ve noted that you repeatedly raise questions of ‘context’ while initially not providing the ‘context’ and later providing links without even remotely suggesting why they lead to information which you believe Charles ought to have provided.
If you had said something along the lines of: “there is interesting context X which I am providing here, which I don’t believe Charles adequately dealt with” that would have been one thing.
That is not what you did. You began with:
“However, your post is so wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest, no mention of any genuine grievances of the rural and poor population, no mention of the historic lack of balance and political fairness in Venezuela before Chavez, no reference to the politicized nature, and anti-free-speech record of Globovision and other “opposition” tv stations, and on and on.
So completely absent, indeed, of any context whatever about Venezuela and its politics and history, is your post, that the overwhelming effect boils down to the point: Hugo Chavez: Utterly Evil Or Just Completely Evil?”
That is a tone of whining and attacking without substance. You may not have intended that tone–heaven knows I often convey tones I did not intend–but it is absolutely the tone you actually conveyed. You began with the attacking tone.
It is AMAZING that you can twist that comment into an accusation without realizing that your approach to Charles was much more accusatory. If that quote of mine is how you get the idea that I’m unfairly attacking you, how in the world is it that you think your initial comments weren’t attacking Charles?
Like Gary, you mention an interest in context but in fact provide no such thing. What context are you attempting to provide when you raise the facts you raise?
I’d have thought it was obvious enough for a retarded Irish Goose to grasp, but Ill spell it out ‘specially for you:
Charles is not an advocate for free press in general. He is an advocate for it when it suits his purposes. In other circumstances, he is an advocate of exercising willpower and doing whatever is necessary for victory.
That doesn’t bear directly on whether or not Chavez is right or not. It does bear on whether the arguments that are being made are being made in good faith. Me, I don’t think Chavez should’ve done this, but he does face a difficult situation: the lone world superpower funded groups who attempted to overthrow his government. Several major media players co-operated with the coup (eg there’s good evidence that they misrepresented video footage of Chavez supporters in a manner that could only incite more violence).
This is not a ‘difficult situation’ to Charles though, because he hates Chavez. So he tries to claim the moral high ground- but he’d already pissed on the moral high ground in advocating the killing of ‘unfriendly’ media.
Ergo, having a discussion about whether Chavez is right or wrong with Charles is pointless- to Charles, Chavez’s *existence* is wrong, and anything that supports that existence is wrong. It is not a real post about or discussion of press freedom; it is propaganda by someone who couldn’t give a rat’s butt about press freedom.
It’s also unfortunate that you’re using Gary’s complaint about context without providing that context (which he later amended) as some sort of whiny white-noise generator. Photosynthesis? STFU.
How’s that for “context”?
Your attempt to provide “context” is predictably misleading, Wu. No surprise, because judging by your history of comments, you prefer attack over dialogue anyway. The difference is that RCTV and Globovision may well prefer a regime other than Chavez’s and may well have been in favor of his forced resignation, but as far as I know they did not incite Venezuelans to kill Venezuelans. Al Zawraa consistently encourages its viewers to kill Americans and Shiites and anyone else supporting the Iraq government. I’m really sorry that you don’t grok that fundamental difference.
Oh, and Gary, your comment below may or may not have crossed the line of the posting rules, but it crossed a line with me.
And as Randy Paul — who actually knows what he’s talking about on the topic…
I don’t see how or why you can expect me to continue a dialogue with you when such an insult is hanging out there.
“That doesn’t bear directly on whether or not Chavez is right or not. It does bear on whether the arguments that are being made are being made in good faith.”
In the main post, which ‘argument’ is not being made in good faith? Please specifically quote it. Thanks.
“It is not a real post about or discussion of press freedom; it is propaganda by someone who couldn’t give a rat’s butt about press freedom.”
Ahhh. I see. So you think bril’s tactic of attacking hilzoy and katherine’s torture posts by attacking their motives or complaining about how evil Al Qaeda is represents in fact a GOOD argument. Or maybe you think it is only a GOOD argument when employed against Charles. That would be interesting in light of:
“He is an advocate for it when it suits his purposes. In other circumstances, he is an advocate of exercising willpower and doing whatever is necessary for victory.”
Let me commend to ObWi readers, especially liberals, the CIP post that Randy Paul linked in a comment above, and the comments. It underscores in neon, without mentioning it, the idiocy of Chavez’ closure of RCTV at this crucial moment for U.S. policy in Latin America.
My guess is that Randy Paul’s and my grasp of the history and current situation in Colombia and Venezuela exceeds that of most regular posters here.
We have our differences. I’m a leftist, or what passes for one in this country. Randy’s a liberal. (Our contrasting views of the NED are a useful microcosm.)
But I’m guessing also that we share the view that U.S. policy toward Colombia needs to take a new turn, and that Democratic members of Congress have an obligation on policy and political grounds to put an end to the rubber-stamping of “death squad democracy” that has been the bipartisan approach of the last eight years.
In the main post, which ‘argument’ is not being made in good faith? Please specifically quote it. Thanks.
Sure, you’re slow today, I don’t mind helping out. How about:
How dare such a network exercise its right to free speech.
In general, the indignation about the violation of speech rights.
__
Ahhh. I see. So you think bril’s tactic of attacking hilzoy and katherine’s torture posts by attacking their motives or complaining about how evil Al Qaeda is represents in fact a GOOD argument.
Nope. There is a difference between questioning the motives for focusing on a particular problem (ie what bril does) and changing ‘moral stances’ depending on who the actors are (ie what Im criticizing Charles for). Im not questioning why Charles picked Venezuela- Im questioning why he’s pretending to care about the concept of a free press.
In fact, that difference is so obvious, you’re statement is really more of a gratuitous insult, unrelated to the conversation. First photosynthesis, now this- you’re getting classier and classier.
In the main post, which ‘argument’ is not being made in good faith? Please specifically quote it. Thanks.
Quite possibly this talk of a media company’s right to free speech and so forth. Charles cites Reporters Without Borders, and properly so, in the case of Hugo Chavez.
In the case of al-Zawraa/Zaura…well let’s see what RWB had to say:
Reporters Without Borders today condemned the Iraqi government’s decision yesterday to close down two privately-owned TV stations for “inciting violence and murder” by screening footage of protests against former President Saddam Hussein’s death sentence. The main daily newspapers have also been suspended for three days beginning yesterday under a curfew decreed prior to the verdict.
“As well as the growing violence against journalists in the field, press freedom violations are also on the increase,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We fear that the Iraqi authorities are exploiting the public’s concern about the bombings and sectarian violence in order to restrict press freedom more and more. Both Iraqi and foreign journalists should be able to freely report the Iraqi people’s reactions.”
The interior ministry yesterday ordered the closure of the Al-Zaura and Salah-Eddin TV stations for broadcasting images of demonstrators brandishing pictures of Saddam and protesting against the court’s verdict. They had incited sectarian violence, the ministry claimed, without specifying when they would be allowed back on the air.
The difference is that RCTV and Globovision may well prefer a regime other than Chavez’s and may well have been in favor of his forced resignation, but as far as I know they did not incite Venezuelans to kill Venezuelans. Al Zawraa consistently encourages its viewers to kill Americans and Shiites and anyone else supporting the Iraq government. I’m really sorry that you don’t grok that fundamental difference.
First, the stations may have *assisted* in the coup. That would be a crime- and in many places a capital crime- just as advocating murder would be.
Second, analogy is never perfect. Pointing out that the analogous situation isn’t *exactly the same* as the original situation isn’t a criticism. It’s merely an observation that it’s an analogy.
Third, you advocating killing the journalists in question, which is also much more harsh than the non-renewal of a broadcast license. I can barely imagine the state of your pretend indignation if Chavez had *blown up* the offending station…
In fact, that difference is so obvious, you’re statement is really more of a gratuitous insult, unrelated to the conversation. First photosynthesis, now this- you’re getting classier and classier.
To make it clearer: the analogous situation would be a hilzoy post cheerleading someone’s torture, not hilzoy choosing what she wants to post about.
To return the favor: you are bril-like in your obtuseness and lack of attention to detail.
There have been something like a half-dozen posts raising rather important issues with your post, Charles. Would you mind actually responding to them instead of getting in a snit that someone claims you don’t know what you’re talking about?
Sebastian: Using government power to outlaw unfavorable media attention is fascistic. Full stop.
While I tend to agree with that, what if the media attention is calling for a coup? What if the media is calling for genocide, viz. Rwanda? Do you feel that there are limits to this or is the proscription against governmental prohibition absolute?
That would be a crime- and in many places a capital crime- just as advocating murder would be.
Then charge them with a crime.
Nell, part of my issue with Chávez reflects my distrust of the military in Latin America, a distrust that liberals and leftists should share. LAtin America would be much better off if it was largely demilitarized a la Costa Rica and the money spent on infrastructure instead.
And I should clarify, since it’s not clear: this isn’t a “Gotcha”, I’m genuinely curious.
“While I tend to agree with that, what if the media attention is calling for a coup? What if the media is calling for genocide, viz. Rwanda? Do you feel that there are limits to this or is the proscription against governmental prohibition absolute?”
Like nearly everything, of course there are limits. None of them apply to the current situation in Venezuala, so they aren’t part of the ‘context’ to be raised. The ‘ticking bomb’ situation is often used to justify torture, but in reality it has nothing to do with the Bush administration’s use of torture. So if I were to complain about hilzoy’s lack of attention to the ticking bomb scenario when she talks about the Bush administrations torture programs, I would be raising bad ‘context’ issues because the ‘context’ I’m raising doesn’t actually relate usefully to what she is talking about. And certainly not enough to accuse her of being “wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest”. The context just doesn’t come even remotely close to justifying the action. And the post wasn’t “a comprehensive look at the entire history of Venezuala”.
Charles was accused for no reason whatsoever as giving a post that was “wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest”. So far as I can see, NONE of the ‘context’ provided offers anything near that accusation. Nothing mentioned was clearly pertinent enough that it would be required to avoid “wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest.” Most of it doesn’t even apply at all.
“That would be a crime- and in many places a capital crime- just as advocating murder would be.”
I don’t understand this. There hasn’t been a trial of the owners. It WOULD be a crime if it really happened the way Chavez hints, but he doesn’t bother trying to prove it, because he really just wants them to shut up about him.
Conversely, the opposition controlled the courts.
Which is to say that in a country in a state of turmoil like Venezuela was and is, there might be a whole bunch of non-legal reasons charges were not brought.
Which is not, per my very first comment in this thread, an endorsement of Chavez’s latest actions.
So, Sebastian, you think it’d be less fascist if Chavez sent in his police, arrested the owners, put them to a trial in front of the court he has packed with his followers, and put them to death? Yeah, pull the other one.
“So, Sebastian, you think it’d be less fascist if Chavez sent in his police, arrested the owners, put them to a trial in front of the court he has packed with his followers, and put them to death?”
That would be pretty fascist too. I wasn’t trying to give the impression that I thought the only possible fascist thing in the world was shutting down the station.
Why do I have an image of Bill Murray saying “cuál es más fascista?”
Okay, as I stated before, I am against what Chavez did, unless there was direct incitement to violence. Some potential for that has been discussed.
Counter question. Sadr’s paper was not calling for violence against American troops when it was shut down, just accused of inciting Iraqi’s through false reporting.
Whether or not the reporting was false is open to question.
Was that action appropriate and if one feels it was, how is it different than this situation.
Serious question, with no snarkiness intended.
To add to John Miller’s point, the owner and executives of al-Zawraa/Zaura also weren’t charged for the actions of their television station (the owner was charged with embezzlement, but this is unrelated)
This should be taken as an endorsement of al-Zawraa
I mean, should not be taken as an endorsement of al-Zawraa.
“Sadr’s paper was not calling for violence against American troops when it was shut down, just accused of inciting Iraqi’s through false reporting.”
Maybe I’m misremembering–they weren’t calling for violence against American Troops but they were calling for a violent overthrow of the government. And Sadr actually attempted armed insurrection three times in two years.
Seb, most of that came after the paper closing. According to Bremer, the reason for the closing was due to false reports intenxded to incite Iraqi’s against the Americans. One article he pointed to was saying an American missile killed Iraqis rather than a car bomb.
Charles’s post is clearly about more than just this one TV network–he’s saying that Chavez is a dictator or heading that way. Which is a fair point to make, but it’s also one that cries out for context. Various commenters have provided that context.
Since 3:15pm EST I’ve been getting the message “You are not allowed to post comments” when I attempt to comment.
If I’ve been banned then the person doing it ought to say so. This would stop other people from continuing to talk to me, and would stop me wondering if this is just a technical glitch or if my ISP is too close to some comment spammer.
Ill refrain from commenting until I hear back one way or the other.
I banned you, Carleton.
You were abusive. I couldn’t post anything at all myself, but I could log in, and so I banned you. I’m going to unban you now, but I want you to know that you really need to calm down a bit.
Normally I don’ do things like ban frequent commenters unilaterally, but I thought things were getting out of hand. If you don’t think so, appeal to the kitty. But please, please let’s not get personal, here.
“I’m going to unban you now, but I want you to know that you really need to calm down a bit.”
I don’t want to make a big song and dance out of this — and any discussion at all on this topic is all too apt to flare up into one, I’m afraid — but while I hasten to emphasize that I have no say in any such decisions, and I’m perfectly well aware of that, but to simply speak as an ‘umble commenter, I did miss seeing any comments by Carleton that seemed to me to warrant banning. It’s perfectly possible I missed them. Could you please, for the sake of transparency, quote the specific passages, please, Slartibartfast?
Thanks.
Gary –
See first and last lines here. What I would consider abusive in an otherwise non-abusive comment (the whole “rat’s butt” thing didn’t bother me).
But, I am a humble commenter and obviously can’t read Slarti’s mind (which is good for both of us, methinks. ;-)).
Various accusations of bad faith, demands to STFU, and possibly a few other things that I don’t care to detail, because this isn’t a court of law. Pestering.
You seemed in need of a stepping-away-from-the-blog, too, Gary, but no longer.
Although I could be wrong about this as well.
Well, that was interesting. I think I’m going to sit on my sunny patio and have an ice cold gin and tonic.
Exactly. I think that very kind of thing, if not that exact thing, is sorely needed. Tempers seem to be even more frayed than usual.
Substitute tea or other beverage of choice for gin. Mine might be a martini, or a scotch, neat.
“Although I could be wrong about this as well.”
No, I’m pretty relaxed at the moment, aside from the sporadic toothache flare-ups, which haven’t happened in the last few hours.
I have varying standards as to how much effort I’ll put into holding someone’s feet to the fire on a given point, but, of course, how much spare time and energy I have, and other variables in my life, are just as significant, but there’s always a point, however immediately, or late, I get to, where I’m content to let someone continue to hold to a point I find fantastic — or even to have made an offensive remark — and yet I’m somehow able to go on with life, and let them live, as well. I’m quite magnanimous about this, actually, and it’s been years since I sent out the Jem H’adar ninja flying robot dolphin-monkeys with frickin’ lasers to eliminate my enemies in a display of ruthless and lethal final condemnation.
Persistence is useful, but only within limits.
The frickin’ lasers part sounds pretty final, Gary. Remind me not to get on your bad side.
Well, Im not a big fan of pretend-cluelessness. It’s hard enough to get to a meeting of the minds without having a demonstrably smart person suddenly claim to not understand how anything is related to Africa or plants…
And he compared me to bril, fer chrissakes. bril. After all our time together I ask you, do I not deserve better than that? Isn’t there something in the posting rules about comparing people to bril?
Ive wondered why I get in so many fights online- this very rarely happens to me in person. I think it’s tone- like when I said STFU, that was really ‘shut-the-f-up-about-the-photosynthesis-already’, not ‘Silence, pig-dog!’ Imagine it with a sort of NYC mock-whining descending tone.
But that pretty much doesn’t get conveyed, which is my fault. Id use genuine humor more often to illustrate my points (rather than mockery and sarcasm), if I had any laying around.
“The frickin’ lasers part sounds pretty final, Gary. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
I’m sure you’ll forgive me for getting technical.
I’m available for an MDA consultancy. The government might want to look into Jem H’adar ninja flying robot dolphin-monkeys with frickin’ lasers possibilities.
Although I’m hesitant to put such dangerous technology into governmental hands, to be honest.
But if all else fails, I always have the armor I’ve made with my JHNFDDMWFL tech. It’s awesome.
I don’t think he compared you to bril, Carleton. Try reading it again.
Again, I could be wrong about that, so let me know if it still reads like you being compared to bril.
Speaking of bril, though:
I’d like to return an equally sincere thanks to bril for his rhetorical evisceration of John Kyl today. I got goosebumps, lemme tell ya.
Slart:
Sebastian certainly compared me to bril.
Sebastian:
Sebastian then went on to Carleton:
I think that, in context, this clearly constitutes Sebastian comparing what bril does to what Carleton does, myself.
bril itself is just a troll, and best discussed as little as possible, because the sole goal of a troll is attention and comments, any sort of attention and any sort of comments. That’s the thrill trolls live for, and it’s all they live for. The only possible way to get rid of them is to ignore them, no matter how tempting it is to play with them by responding, because when finally totally starved of attention, they get bored and look for another place to get it.
To be sure, that takes stern self-discipline, and I give in to the temptation myself, from time to time. But it’s still incredibly counter-productive, because that’s what they live for.
Refutations are pretty much useless, because a troll doesn’t respond logically, or care. They just want attention.
As to the general right wing conniption in the last week about al Qaeda torture, it’s only in their fevered brains that anyone isn’t aware of the barbarity and evil of al Qaeda’s endeavors (say, did something happen in NYC at some point? I don’t pay much attention to this stuff), so that the point needs to be ritually reiterated. That, too, really doesn’t deserve to be dignified with an affirmation that, hey, al Qaeda torture and murder and beheading and so forth is disgusting evil. It’s not actually a shocking revelation.
“I’m available for an MDA consultancy.”
Probably a pile-on, Gary, but did you see that Kevin Drum&Co. are advertising for an editor?
Well, that was interesting. I think I’m going to sit on my sunny patio and have an ice cold gin and tonic.
Now the real question: what gin? And yes, there are wrong answers.
What’s the right gin in a G&T? A cheap one, I’d guess.
I used to be a Bombay Sapphire kind of guy, back when I drank gin. I haven’t had G&T for over a decade, though; possibly two.
It was Sapphire, and no you don’t want to waste a premium gin on a mixed drink.
If I could take this moment to recommend South Gin, out of New Zealand.
The unanimous approval of Sapphire convinces me that I’m on the right blog.
By the by: I’m extraordinarily irked that one of our local liquor stores, that stocks something like 20 different kinds of gin, no longer offers free tastes. Most unfair.
I drink Sapphire in martinis, but I’m going to try other stuff after reading this.
Well I’d feel sorry for you except up here in Canuckistan you can’t even buy a six-pack from your local 7-11. Except in Quebec. You can buy a bottle anywhere in Quebec. Even church.
Or so I’m told.
Just to add, to be all needlessly snooty and all: Plymouth gin – the style and/or, to cut to the chase, thebrand – is the gin for a G & T.
But you can’t use it for anything else. Too sweet.
For one thing, I keep the Sapphire bottle in the freezer and thus don’t shake with ice and skimp on the vermouth, and I think the alcohol content is just too high, at least for my advancing age.
Any suggestions on good easily-available martini olives? I never seem to find anything as good as what I get in the kind of bars where I order martinis.
The NYT article I linked to liked Plymouth best for martinis.
Plymouth is fantastic in blue cheese martinis; I’m not convinced of any other applications. Sapphire is excellent — IMO, the best, actually — for G&Ts but, like most gins, you need to water it down a little (with melting ice or tonic) to taste all the botanicals. Otherwise you just get the attack of the alcohol and some vague juniper fragrance, which misses the point.
rilkefan: depending on how you want them stuffed, try your local deli. I know mine stocks some reasonable ones. Failing that, next time you’re at a bar, ask — I suspect they’re just your garden-variety bulk cocktail olive but one never knows. Not really much of a help since I almost never use cocktail olives in drinks.
spartikus,
“Well I’d feel sorry for you except up here in Canuckistan you can’t even buy a six-pack from your local 7-11.”
Don’t get me started on Pennsylvania’s Liquor Control Board and its remarkably strange rules on alcoholic beverage sales. Short description on beer — you can buy only by the case at beer distributors. You can buy six-packs only from bars or certain stores with licenses (at massively inflated prices). You cannot buy beer anywhere else, including supermarkets.
“bril itself is just a troll, and best discussed as little as possible, because the sole goal of a troll is attention and comments, any sort of attention and any sort of comments.”
Gary,
Really? Then why don’t I respond multiple times in threads? Wouldn’t that create more comments? Why don’t I try to engage people in a back and forth discussion? Wouldn’t that also? How many times did I respond in the post the other day in order to create more comments? Perhaps you can point out the times in the last few months that I have actually engaged anyone in a discussion in order to increase comments, excluding this instance.
You and I both know there is no point. Your understanding of me is incorrect. I have previously posted the reason for the way I post here. I can’t help that you don’t remember or believe my stated reason.
Sebastian,
I’m not trying to make an argument only a single point. I was only pointing out that Katherine and Hilzoy find it far more important to criticize our government as opposed to AQ. Do you disagree?
Would Hilzoy are Katherine disagree? It appears Gary doesn’t.
Everyone knows AQ is evil so there is no reason to talk about it. But certainly they believe it is their responsibility to criticize the US and hold them to a higher standard.
That in and of itself isn’t a bad thing.
It is the degree to which they do it over the other that makes them appear to support the enemy and desire US defeat. That’s my problem with them. If you ask them if they want the US to be defeated they will say no. When you look at their ongoing actions whose side benefits most from their actions? Read this site. They aren’t anti-AQ. They are anti-Bush. They aren’t even both.
Bush is the leader of the war. This is where they make an intellectual disconnect from the real world. They appear to believe that one can still support the US objectives, but not support the leader. I can only imagine how the head coach of a team would react and perform in that kind of an environment. Bush is not a legitimate leader in their eyes. They have never recognized him as such. Hence, another intellectual disconnect from the real world. They don’t think their actions affect AQ, but somehow their actions affect Bush. However the reality is their actions have an impact on both.
Imagine the impact if all the women in the western world protested how women in Islamic countries are treated. The feminist aren’t interested in using this tactic to support their beliefs. In my town the “Women in Black” meet and protest the war, but not the people who are the major oppressors of women in the world. Katherine and Hilzoy are not much different.
I would say they are helping AQ to achieve victory the only way in which AQ can. The media. They will tell you they have no impact over AQ. I would respectfully disagree and say the exact opposite is true. Their actions and people like them lend support to AQ in the media. I would argue that people like Hilzoy and Katherine are AQ’s target audience and its enablers in the media war. The more negative buzz created about the WOT by anyone the better. This site helps AQ meet their strategic objective.
If you could put a percentage on the different factors affecting the multiple battle spaces what would they be?
For example,
20% US military on the ground
20% US government
20% Actions of the enemy
20% MSM
I’m not claiming those are my numbers or a complete list, just a perspective of the war. But I will make the statement that if this war is lost it will primarily be Bush’s fault. (Not because of his overall incompetence. Going to war with a country that hasn’t fought a ground war in 30 years is a learning process and I can accept that many mistakes will be made and that we must adapt.)
It will be due to his failure to recognize and accept this war is primarily a media war. It will be for his failure to realize and accept that in the MOST important way this war is like Vietnam. Not on the ground, but in the airwaves.
We have already fought it and lost it once. Millions of innocents paid the price.
Regardless of how incompetent the government or the military has been, eventually the military is smart enough to adapt. Historically they can and will, if given the time and space.
But, in the most important battle field, AQ couldn’t ask for better partners than Katherine and Hilzoy!
Personally, I believe that when they take AQ personally they will change their ways and support the US. Due to their academic and intellectual disconnect from the realities of what it means on the ground if the US is defeated that allows them to act complicitly without feeling like they are doing so. When that gap is bridged they will most likely pony up. Until they are threatened with the “real” prospects of a burka it is just all theory and analysis to them. That’s the challenge for academics in general.
I think they believe it is more important to hold our government accountable than the enemy. Can you imagine taking the time to figure out the “root” causes when some stranger has just broken into your house and is threatening you and your family. You have the means to defend yourself, but first you decide to analyze your own actions and try to figure out why the person has broken into your home. Your family is there with you, but you turn to your family and say, “Yes, he wants to rob and kill us but we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We need to understand him better before take action.
I admit that sounds reasonable on paper. Someone breaks into your home and you try to talk them down. But at the end point of a gun and your family threatened, the reality of that approach is absurd. “Honey, there is a guy breaking into our house. Let’s go see what he wants.” “Just leave the gun in the closet. I’m just going to try and talk to him first.” That’s where it appears they mentally disconnect and the academic takes over. They stay on the academic path, not the “real” world path.
I find that belief and disconnect very disturbing. Can you imagine how previous generations would respond to that logic? “If our country is facing a ruthless enemy it is more important to focus on criticizing yourself and holding yourself to a higher standard rather than focusing on defeating the enemy.” I can only imagine all the wars we would have one with that approach. The other intellectual disconnect is that people like Hilzoy and Katherine want to believe that we have evolved beyond the need for war. Odd that the same people who are proponents of evolution forget that means we are actually animals and often times must deal with the reality of our animalistic nature.
Their approach to Bush and AQ doesn’t lend itself to helping Bush win the strategic war against AQ. It helps AQ far more with respect to the media war, which is the one that we are truly losing.
On another note, a big problem with the conservative movement is that we are afraid to call a spade a spade. That has to stop. When their are people that are doing more to help the enemy achieve its goals rather than our own country, regarless of how bad our leader must be, we have to start calling them out.
Hilzoy and Katherine are doing more to help AQ win the war than they are to help Bush. That’s just wrong and anti-American.
If they want to know how to criticize the President and still support the troops and the US their are many good examples. Joe Lieberman comes to mind, but I believe Hilzoy doesn’t like him any more.
Gary, it is my hope that you will not be tempted to respond to any trollish tripe that may be posted here.
On another note, a big problem with the conservative movement is that we are afraid to call a spade a spade.
I think the conservative movement has a lot of big problems (too many to count!), but I wouldn’t include the above among them.
Model62, actualy it is. They tend to call a spade a bulldozer.
Charles is not an advocate for free press in general.
The statement is a lie, Wu. Please find one example, excepting those where a media outlet expressly incites violence, where I do not support a free press. You will find no such example, so you should retract your statement and apologize. This is yet another incidence of bad faith from you.
As for al-Zawraa TV, you make unfounded projections that the only way to destroy a station is to “kill journalists”, and further speculate that those at the station are journalists to begin with. Yet here is this very post is an example of a station destroyed without a shot fired. There is more than one way to end a station’s broadcasts (and I prefer any method that will not take civilian lives), but if you’re arguing in bad faith and trying to put your detractor in the worst possible light, those little details don’t matter.
…because he hates Chavez.
Karnak Award. I hate what Chavez does. If he turned the ratchet the other way in terms freedoms and rights, then I would be in favor of his governance. Too bad that has never happened.
…to Charles, Chavez’s *existence* is wrong, and anything that supports that existence is wrong.
Second Karnak Award. Chavez has been duly elected on multiple occasions. By all appearances, he is the legitimate president of Venezuela, so I may disapprove of his acts but accept his existence in office.
Seriously, folks, if bril is being labeled a troll from the right (and I agree with Sebastian’s reprimand), why isn’t Wu behaving like a troll from the left? Last I checked, “do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake” is a violation of the posting rules.
Sebastian,
Funny I actually take the time to make an actual argument here and see the response…
Maybe, Buckley has said it better.
In the currency of human deaths, it is unlikely that we would match in Iraq what we stood by for in Vietnam. The statistics aren’t even there to count accurately the casualties of defeat in that theater. But the most graphic symbol is the picture of Vietnamese, young and old, clinging to a U.S. helicopter in the desperate, final hope to be taken away from those waiting to torture and kill them. As stated, the statistics are not final, but somewhere between a quarter-million and 2 million or even 3 million Vietnamese suffered from our flight from the burden we first had undertaken, and then abandoned.
Henry Kissinger has said that the use of the American fleet to contain the invasion of 1975 could have saved the day. What could save the day in Iraq? Nothing short of public revulsion toward those Democrats who are measuring these days the political value of honor. In the election ahead, all the world will be looking over our shoulders, including the ghosts of Vietnam.
People like Hilzoy and Katherine need to know that their moral relativism is repulsive.
What’s the right gin in a G&T?
Sapphire
Tanqueray will do, but you have to pronounce it the way the dumb girl on Beavis and Butthead said it (it was the name of her friend): Tayyynka-raaaay.
Neither Hilzoy nor Katherine are relativists. If anything their harder-than-you-like non-relativism on torture is your main problem with them.
I am EXTREMELY reluctant to do this, and fully acknowledge the irony of doing so on a thread that is so interested in free speech. But bril, you repeatedly engage in extreme rhetorical bomb-throwing and very personal attacks. You occassionally make interesting points, but they are deeply shadowed by your unfair attacks. While I’m increasingly skeptical that we can maintain a good forum here, I am certain that you are making things very much worse.
If you would like to commit to toning things down and trying to engage in reasoned discussion, you may appeal the ban by writing to our general email address or emailing one of the other members. Over all I wish you well. But in this forum you are acting like poison.
I also see that you post from multiple IP addresses. I have banned your most popular ones, but you should understand that missing one is not an open invitation to return. If you wish to resume commenting here, please petition via email. You are a conservative, so I trust you will understand and respect limitations placed on invitations to private property.
” While I’m increasingly skeptical that we can maintain a good forum here,”
Things have gotten too personal, both here and in the von thread.
The basic reason that Republicans like to focus on Chavez and Venezuela–as opposed to any of the dozens of other noxious regimes in the world–is because Chavez is a leftist, a nominal socialist. His totalitarian tendencies make him an easy and convenient tool with which to tar Democrats and liberals.
It’s not that they’re wrong about Chavez, for the most part, it’s just that the way they obsess over him rankles because it’s such a transparent attempt at guilt by association. Chavez, on the scale of bad world leaders, is a little turd in a big bowl.
Chavez’s move has provided a useful rallying point for the opposition.
Chavez, on the scale of bad world leaders, is a little turd in a big bowl.
So – push the handle… Swwooosh…
I don’t think he compared you to bril, Carleton. Try reading it again.
See, no matter how hard I try to talk tongue-in-cheek on the net, it seems to come out as straight. I feel like such a failure…
(nb that last bit, Im kidding. I feel fine.)
Seriously, folks, if bril is being labeled a troll from the right (and I agree with Sebastian’s reprimand), why isn’t Wu behaving like a troll from the left?
Did you miss the part where Slarti temp-banned him?
Please find one example, excepting those where a media outlet expressly incites violence, where I do not support a free press.
Dan Rather and Eason Jordan. [Links available on request, though they really shouldn’t be necessary.] Your calls for their firing, and copious failure to call for the firing of those who’ve made similar (or worse) errors in the past, belies any claim of neutrality you might have; whether it constitutes rejection of “the free press” depends on how one exactly interprets the notion.
…which is itself a very interesting question, but one I don’t have time for.
The statement is a lie, Wu. Please find one example, excepting those where a media outlet expressly incites violence, where I do not support a free press. You will find no such example, so you should retract your statement and apologize. This is yet another incidence of bad faith from you.
Bad faith isn’t me reading your writing and taking it as I see it. Which is what Im doing. I think you like to re-adjust your positions on the fly, and then hurl these sorts of accusations at those who don’t play nice, who don’t go along with your changing positions.
I offer an example of that behavior. Just now you wrote
As for al-Zawraa TV, you make unfounded projections that the only way to destroy a station is to “kill journalists”, and further speculate that those at the station are journalists to begin with. Yet here is this very post is an example of a station destroyed without a shot fired. There is more than one way to end a station’s broadcasts…
You’re just playing semantic games. You weren’t talking about “destroying” the station in Syria by revoking its license to operate- indeed, that would be a strange use of the word “destroy”. You were talking about rendering it inoperable by force. Maybe not ‘leave a crater’ force, but you certainly weren’t talking about a bureaucratic move when you said …the Coalition has every right to find the damn studio and launch a military strike against the al-Zawraa station. You said the station should be snuffed out.
So why are you shifting the ground? You were saying that a military strike was justified, but when confront about this you suddenly go off on a tangent about revoking their license. And you present it as if I had misunderstood your original point.
But this new position is tangential (at best) to your original point, that we had the right physically destroy the station. That was the point you were being called on, and you now want to pretend (ie present as if I misunderstood) that you meant something very different.
That kind of semantic game allows you to make constructions as you did above: excepting those where a media outlet expressly incites violence. The whole game is hidden in those words- as long as Charles Bird gets to define the terms and Charles Bird gets to re-define his older positions, Charles Bird can continue to prove to his own satisfaction that he’s never wrong. You even reserved the right to define who is a journalist ([you] speculate that those at the station are journalists to begin with). If past patterns continue, you’ll use that power to defend ideologically friendly journalists, while removing that label from those who say things you don’t like. Thus you could safely say that you’ve always defended the rights of journalists- bc you’ve got the power to assign the label.
_____
These two situations (Iraq and Venezuela) actually appear very similar to me. You’ve drawn the post-facto arbitrary line about “incites violence”, but IMO a media outlet that calls for violence and a media outlet that outrageously misrepresents events in the middle of a coup are not very different. They are both functioning as the advocates for destabilizing criminal activity, without acting directly.
In a stable environment, those sorts of activities could be dealt with without infringing on speech freedoms. For example, we allow Ann Coulter to jokingly suggest murdering Supreme Court Justices (ie we respect the fiction that she’s kidding), because our society is robust enough to handle it. Venezuela and Iraq may not be, so they (again IMO) have a reasonable argument for suppressing media that are disrupting an already unstable society. (nb I’ve already said I don’t agree with Chavez’s actions).
If your positions aren’t ideologically driven, then they are just baffling: in the two cases that appear so similar to me, you think one justifies a military strike and the other creates righteous indignation against a license not being renewed. Even if you thought that they were different enough to require a different response, the radically different responses you suggest IMO defy logic.
Unless you are not really concerned with press freedom per se, but with actions that you see helping or hindering the interests of the US. You can call that bad faith- I call that a reasonable interpretation of your wildly varying responses.
I’d prefer not to get back to bril, because it’s somewhat unfair, giving the banning, though I find it ironic that bril was finally banned after bril made a quite substantive post, that wasn’t terribly trollish.
But to answer your question, Charles, and to resist my urge to reply “I don’t know, why isn’t Wu behaving like a troll from the left?,” the answer is that he’s not acting like a troll. At all.
You may be unclear on what a troll is (as I recall, you have no Usenet experience), and what a troll is has nothing to do with ObWi’s posting rules. Whether or not Carleton has violated the posting rules isn’t in any way relevant to the question of why he isn’t a troll.
Trolling is posting in an entirely off-topic way, with no intent whatever to do other than provoke as much outrage and annoyance as possible.
There’s a rather rambling entry here, which I think underemphasizes that a key element of a troll is that they almost only do the above. Someone who regularly posts reasonable material, but is sometimes unreasonable, is not a troll. A troll is not merely “an annoying person,” and it most certainly is not merely any abusive person.
There are all sorts of ways to be a jerk online without being a troll. And relatively few people who violate the ObWi posting rules are trolls.
As I said, bril’s last message wasn’t particularly a troll, by itself, I’d say, since it was responsive and substantive and on-topic to previous comments. But bril rarely does that, and instead almost always posts on an entirely off-topic point, in an attempt to disrupt conversation onto this other point, which bril feels needs addressing.
That‘s trolling, when it’s done in a consistently disruptive or hostile way. If bril wanted to behave appropriately and post on those topics, bril would start a blog of bril’s own, and confine responses on other blogs to whatever is appropriate to that blog.
You’re perfectly free to criticize Carleton, hold him to the posting rules, argue with him, be bitchy back, or whatever, within the posting rules, Charles, and to find him as annoying as you like.
But while Carleton may have crossed the posting rules with a couple of words, perhaps, he’s clearly not trolling. His replies are responsive, even if you don’t like them, or even if they’re unpleasant or uncalled for. They don’t sail off onto some other topic entirely, which only Carleton thinks is appropriate. He’s not trolling. Maybe he’s being annoying, but that’s not at all the same thing.
I hope this answers your question. If not, feel free to ask for clarification.
“…Charles Bird can continue to prove to his own satisfaction that he’s never wrong.”
In fairness, Charles admits he’s wrong, from time to time.
It isn’t easy to get him to do it, and it doesn’t happen often, but it does happen far more often than “never.”
OK, Gary, I take back my suggestion of Wu’s trollishness.
Your calls for their firing, and copious failure to call for the firing of those who’ve made similar (or worse) errors in the past…
And yet CBS and CNN live on, Anarch, and the federal government has taken no action and made no threats concerning their broadcast licenses. You’re trying to conflate two separate issues into one. If any major journalist commits malpractice on the scale of Rather or makes outrageously unsupportable statements such as Jordan, then I would question whether they should remain employed in their esteemed positions. Just trying to be consistent. My larger concern with both Rather and Jordan was their stonewalling and lack of corrective measures after the mistakes were made.
You’ve drawn the post-facto arbitrary line about “incites violence”…
Like those arbitrary lines set forth in our Constitution and Supreme Court? Please tell me how my views vary one iota from our own rule of law, because that’s exactly what I’m going by. But hey, your mind’s made up, and it seems I can’t persuade you of the difference between an organization that exhorts its viewers to kill Americans and Shiites and an organization that covers one set of protesters but not another. If RCTV truly did incite violence, do you really think Chavez would hesitate one minute in arresting the TV executives? The real player of semantics is you trying to portray the two stations as somehow similar.
And yes, I did say “military strike” in my al-Zawraa post, but I didn’t specify what kind. My preferred means is one that does not take civilian life under accepted rules of war. But if it can be destroyed without a military strike, then that would be my most preferred method. Those are my defaults for your information, but since you consistently favor attack over dialogue, you give no benefit of the doubt in that regard.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I wrote my Tough month post before I saw your comment that “Charles Bird can continue to prove to his own satisfaction that he’s never wrong.” So I hope you’ll agree with me that that statement of yours is complete bullsh*t.
Charles: If RCTV truly did incite violence, do you really think Chavez would hesitate one minute in arresting the TV executives?
C, this makes it appear that you have not read my comment above. Chavez prosecuted very few of those involved in the coup in the succeeding two years, only a few of the senior, very public military partipants. (Also, in absentia, the dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona, now living in Colombia).
Like those arbitrary lines set forth in our Constitution and Supreme Court?
Perhaps you were unaware that neither Venezuela nor Iraq are parts of the United States. The legal distinction that allows Coulter’s ‘joking’ suggestions to kill a USSC justice to pass while forbidding someone from actually recommending that action exists here- but that doesn’t make it non-arbitrary. It certainly doesn’t make it binding on the rest of the world.
If the offending station had properly (ie by American standards) hidden their suggestions as ‘jokes’, that wouldn’t matter one bit to me. If they said “wouldn’t it be funny to kill Americans with an IED?”, would you conclude that they should get a pass bc they were adhering to American jurisprudence (for some bizarre reason)?
But hey, your mind’s made up, and it seems I can’t persuade you of the difference between an organization that exhorts its viewers to kill Americans and Shiites and an organization that covers one set of protesters but not another.
You know that’s not the most serious thing the station has been accused of- it’s been referenced on this very thread. Im not really interested in re-explaining it or hunting up links, since you aren’t really interested in debating the issue.
Really, it wouldn’t weaken your position to admit the existence of bad acts by the station. It would give you the opportunity to explain why you think they weren’t that bad, or should be protected, or whatever.
Pretending they don’t exist makes your case look weak, like the real facts are just too scary to deal with.
If RCTV truly did incite violence, do you really think Chavez would hesitate one minute in arresting the TV executives?
I have very little insight into Chavez, but at least what insight I have isn’t dominated by ideology- whereas your ideology appears to have granted you mindreading powers. If you assume he’s a bad actor, then reaching the conclusion he’s a bad actor isn’t much of a challenge, is it now?
And yes, I did say “military strike” in my al-Zawraa post, but I didn’t specify what kind. My preferred means is one that does not take civilian life under accepted rules of war. But if it can be destroyed without a military strike, then that would be my most preferred method. Those are my defaults for your information, but since you consistently favor attack over dialog, you give no benefit of the doubt in that regard.
Im not arguing that you think the station should be blown up. Im presenting the irrefutable fact that you argued that we had the *right* to blow it up. That blowing it up was an acceptable response. Im not debating your preferences because I don’t see that as being relevant.
Conflating what I said you felt was justified and what I said you *wanted* is just another way of avoiding genuine discussion.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I wrote my Tough month post before I saw your comment that “Charles Bird can continue to prove to his own satisfaction that he’s never wrong.” So I hope you’ll agree with me that that statement of yours is complete bullsh*t.
My statement is generalized; I agree with Gary that you occasionally admit error, but usually we get the sort of obfuscation as above (moving goalposts, redefining terms, shifting positions, accusations, ‘forgetting’ facts). So, since it didn’t depend on any particular statement of yours occurring at any particular time but on your general patterns of behavior, your hopes have been sadly dashed once again.
the federal government has taken no action and made no threats concerning their broadcast licenses.
Like I said, it depends on how one defines “free press”. You’re correct that there was no federal action to remove those journalists; there was, however, a concerted mass effort to remove those journalists from their posts, to drown out and ostracize anyone who said anything similar, and to prevent such criticisms from being raised in any wise in the future.
Further, the ostensible reason — journalistic malpractice — isn’t credible by itself since there are other who have committed far more egregious sins (e.g. Judy Miller) who haven’t been touched and who, in some cases (e.g. Ben Domenech, if he counts), were vociferously defended. IOW, it’s all very well to say one is standing on principle… but then one actually has to stand on that principle in order to remain credible.
Please be aware that I’m deliberately speaking in a larger context than just you here as I don’t particularly feel like rehashing the specifics of old battles and neither, I suspect, do you. However, in that larger context, it’s not at all clear to me that a polity truly has a “free press” if the majority can eliminate certain viewpoints that aren’t illegitimate, merely unfortunate. The precise drawing of the lines, or shading of the greys, is now left to the reader.
“The precise drawing of the lines, or shading of the greys, is now left to the reader.”
I have absolutely no drawing/painting/sketching talent. I always color outside the lines.
This piece by Patrick McLemee of Just Foreign Policy questions the extent to which the non-renewal of RCTV’s broadcast license (they can still reach viewers by satellite dish and cable) is a free speech issue. He explores the issues with reps of the human rights and press freedom groups who criticized the move.
It may not convince anyone reading here that the RCTV nonrenewal is not a concern, but at a minimum it provides enough further information about the Venezuelan media environment to counter Sebastian’s overblown claims.
Sorry, that’s Patrick McElwee. Off to bed.
“(they can still reach viewers by satellite dish and cable) is a free speech issue”
Before reading the piece, which I’m about to, I have to say that this parenthetical argument seems highly dubious: what would you say if the Bush administration decided to not renew CBS’s license, and gave it to Rupert Murdoch, and the Bush defenders explained that this wasn’t a free speech issue, because CBS was still going to be available on satellite dish and cable?
Hmm, this has a lot of interesting specifics, to be sure.
“…because he hates Chavez.”
Karnak Award. I hate what Chavez does. If he turned the ratchet the other way in terms freedoms and rights, then I would be in favor of his governance.
So, you don’t hate Chavez; you admit that you hate what he does, what he stands for, his entire political reason for existing- but you want to hand out a Karnak for me saying that you hate *him*.
Is there an actual distinction there? Seem to me like “I didn’t say I hated chopper liver and onions, I just hate the way it *tastes*”.
Just thought of an interesting example: let’s say that a Syrian TV station is broadcasting documentary stuff, instead of inciting violence. “How to build an IED” and “Small Unit Ambush Tactics”.
That sort of thing would justify shutting the station down. Id even understand using military force against it. But disseminating *that* sort of information would be protected in the US.
Point being, the rules are very different elsewhere- not just that they are, but that that’s appropriate. Even here, you have a right to a jury trial- but they’ll shoot looters on sight during a riot. And we all understand why.
C, this makes it appear that you have not read my comment above.
I did read it, Nell, as well as your ensuing comment of how Chavez jerry-rigged the judicial system after he didn’t get what he wanted. The fact remains that he didn’t arrest and jail RCTV executives, but he got plenty of political mileage in the aftermath, including an award-winning documentary film that worked in his favor.
As for, Wu, it’s a waste of my time responding to you any further. You’re just going to keep on keeping on with your jerkoff comments.
Funny, you seem so willing to engage when “engage” means obfuscate. Whenever we get to this point in the conversation, you suddenly decide it’s not worth having. When you can’t pretend you don’t know what RCTV actually did, when you can’t claim having someone quote your past comments is “predictably misleading”, when you can’t pretend you didn’t suggest that blowing up unfriendly media was Ok…
Well, you just run out of gas.
But since you’re on your way out, and since you’re so fond of demanding apologies and retractions…
My first post here consisted of me calling you a defender of press freedom (with my tongue in my cheek) and then a big quote from you. I was, I think, careful to quote enough of the piece to both preserve context and to make it clear that bombing 1)wasn’t your first option and 2)was generally distasteful to you on speech grounds. I felt that I bent over backwards to to fair to your viewpoint in the article as a whole.
Yet you called it misleading. I say- substantiate that, or take it back. And leave out the “jerkoff” comments- if Im going to be banned for incivility, then have the decency not to abuse your position.
I actually agree with Carleton, above, re: “jerkoff”: front-pagers ought not to indulge in name-calling. If anything, front-pagers ought to hold themselves to a higher standard than the posting rules require. Calling anyone a troll who is manifestly not a troll (simply because they happen to be behaving in a way that comes off as unpleasant) is one of those things a front-pager should avoid doing. And certainly a front-pager ought to take the time to underscore someone’s jerk-offiness without calling them a jerkoff. For lessons in how that’s done, I recommend Scott Eric Kauffman or Gary Farber, when his teeth aren’t bothering him.
Which isn’t any point at all about Gary, other than I think he tends to write much more effectively (even crushingly, at times) when ungrumpy.
Which is not to excuse Carleton; I think he’s getting a little vindictive, here, particularly as regards the bad-faith accusations. One can certainly accuse Charles of being inconsistent, but the accusation that he’s deliberately making arguments that he doesn’t actually agree with needs some substantiation, because in my view that is a serious charge. Just as accusing someone of being a liar, or telling a lie, needs substantiation.
And that’s really all I have to say about that.
Carleton: For the foreseeable future, your future posts on this site will on the substance of the speech rather than the identity of the speaker. You’ve engaged in the ad hominem fallacy from the start; despite efforts to redirect you, you have persisted in it throughout. It is destroying the conversation, contrary to the spirit of the blog, and is wholly unfair to Charles.
I suggest that you’re done on this thread, and that you redirect efforts in the future to responding to the substance of the post rather than attacking the speaker. You are very close to being banned.
End bold.
Erm, end bold? Now?
Fixed, von.
Thanks, Slarti.
You’ve engaged in the ad hominem fallacy from the start…
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to bring up someone’s previous posts on a subject to demonstrate whether or not they’re being consistent. This is not ad hominem, since my intent isn’t to attack the speaker, but to bring into question one of his premises(ie press freedom should be rigorously defended even in unstable situations) by showing that he himself did not support that assumption.
That is, I didn’t say “this isn’t true because Charles is a bad person”, I said “Charles is advocating this principle of press freedom against a regime he doesn’t like, but radically changes his position when his feelings for the regime are different”. Thus, we can compare the two examples, see where they are different, and decide whether or not the premise is correct or needs to be re-examined or re-stated. Or, perhaps his earlier argument was invalid & needs to be re-examined.
If you’re going to accuse someone of ad hominem, please understand what it means first. For example, Charles immediately dismissed my quote of his with a classic ad hominen : Your attempt to provide “context” is predictably misleading, Wu. No surprise, because judging by your history of comments, you prefer attack over dialogue anyway– but for some reason this didn’t offend you.
My bringing up of that former post, delivered with a tongue-in-cheek that is certainly within the normal tone of the board, was met with 1)an accusation of being misleading and 2)a gratuitously insulting ramble about context that served no purpose in the discussion. This by front-pagers, who are now complaining about the tone of the discussion.
Perhaps my offense is not relenting when pointing out the mistakes of posters. If bringing up Charles’s previous posts when I think they’re not consistent with his current views is out of bounds, I dont know that Id want to be here in any case. If front-pagers can practice unprovoked ad hominem and gratuitous insults but cannot even handle having their own words quoted back at them, then there are some beams that need to be cast out of some eyes.
One can certainly accuse Charles of being inconsistent, but the accusation that he’s deliberately making arguments that he doesn’t actually agree with needs some substantiation, because in my view that is a serious charge.
Fair enough; I think that bringing up the quote is how to do that. We sort of started down a discussion of the matter, but the front-pagers also started out by injecting accusations and other bad behavior, and the conversation went downhill. Ill accept responsibility for my actions there, but I can’t make the debate reasonable & therefore attempt to substantiate things, I need a little cooperation from Charles. I won’t both challenge his premise & defend it for him.
Broadly speaking, there are two main approaches to argument when there is disagreement: there’s assuming bad faith by the other, and interpreting every comment in that light, and responding harshly and with hostility, and nothing but refutation and condemnation, and there’s assuming good faith, and interpreting every comment in that light, and responding courteously, and seeking points of agreement.
Naturally, most commonly we employ some mix, depending on our perception of the Other, and upon our situation, mood, general style, and other factors.
But in general, hostility tends to provoke counter-hostility. Extending the courtesy of at least trying to act under a presumption of good faith, and that errors are misunderstandings, not lies, tends to leave far larger chances of reaching points of agreement.
But one has to look for those points of agreement, and actively try to find them, to get to them.
It’s possible that both Carleton and Charles, and perhaps almost all of us, could do a somewhat better job, and make a somewhat better effort at that.
“I suggest that you’re done on this thread”
This came across to me very much as bullying in tone, Von, which I’m sure is not how you meant it.
Personally, I find Carleton’s style to be frequently very much “in your face,” but that’s largely fine with me, so long as he doesn’t cross over into abuse, which he occasionally does. I’d like, myself, to see him be more careful about not going over that line, but otherwise I don’t see him as in any way doing anything worth banning, or even that should bring the topic up.
But I see Carleton — who has not hesitated to be equally sharp and vigorous in arguing with, or challenging, me and things I’ve said — as providing plenty of good points in his arguments, as a rule, and plenty of good comments.
(Honestly, I see Carleton as, generally speaking, contributing a great deal more often, with quality comments, than von has in years, but Von’s perfectly entitled to have other priorities, of course.)
And I don’t see Carleton as particularly more out of control or abusive than many others, although, of course, there’s a tremendous amount of subjectivity in these judgments, and naturally one is affected by how right or wrong one thinks the arguments being made are, and not just how offensive a given word or phrase is, which also adds great subjectivity to such judgments).
In any case, while I absolutely think it’s the place of moderators to moderate, and for guidance to be given about appropriate language, I also think it’s a very bad idea for moderators to use their position of power to further their partisan views, and to threaten commenters whose views they disagree with and dislike. I think that sort of interaction can be powerfully chilling, and damaging to many, and I strongly urge all the blog-owners with the power to ban to resist the urge to threaten to use that power against people they’re arguing with. Let them try to restrain themselves to only bringing up such topics when they’re less ideologically motivated to emotionally engage with people, please.
“I suggest that you’re done on this thread” is not phrasing I’m inclined to think is appropriate: who is anyone to know what the next thing another person might say is, or what change of tack they might take? I’d hope not to see this particular phrase, or type of phrase, show up again, as opposed to other forms of guidelines, suggestions, or warnings.
My thanks to any blog-owner who considers this.
“And I don’t see Carleton as particularly more out of control or abusive than many others”
I agree. And it is the fact that his is the level of the norm of the discussion that makes it pretty much not worth having. His comments don’t devolve into attacks, they start there. That kind of game can be played at hundreds of place on the internet, we don’t need it every moment here. Everyone, including me, has their bad moments. That is rather different from starting there and getting worse.
I may not have been clear in trying to communicate my view that a certain level of presumption of good faith in argument is necessary for argument to be in any way productive, and that I think we could do more of people at least acting as if they held that presumption, and looked for points of agreement to find, and noted them, rather than just monotonously attacking, which I agree is ultimately pointless if that’s the only approach one takes.
It would probably also help if each of us would wear a silly hat when arguing furiously. The Hat Of Vehemence — perhaps a nice frilly bonnet? — could help temper one’s self-righteousness.
Okay, maybe not, but others might have suggestions.
We could adopt the rules and style of Congress when we respectfully disagree with our honorable opponent, the distinguished lady/gentleman from Y. Does the honorable gentleman from San Diego have any thoughts on this matter?
We could adopt the rules and style of Congress
Wait… Are you trying to help or really push things over the edge here? 😉
It occasionally helps me to restrain myself when I remember that “winning” an argument in a blog comment thread probably does less good for the world than just being respectful to people one encounters.
Not that I live by this to any consistent degree.
Also, as ugly as things get around here, it’s better than a great many blogs I visit, including some that I won’t mention that pride themselves on their civility. Bright articulate people often know how to humiliate their opponents with malice aforethought while staying well within the supposed lines of civility. I don’t mean taking someone’s argument apart either.
I’d hold hilzoy up as the model of how we should argue. Not that I always agree with her, but one thing I don’t ever recall seeing her do is insult someone in the comments thread in that oh-so-witty and clever way that people with the talent for that kind of thing like to do. Of course many of us (including me) sometimes like to see people cleverly eviscerated, so given that I don’t expect the millenium to arrive at ObiWi any time soon.
I agree. And it is the fact that his is the level of the norm of the discussion that makes it pretty much not worth having.
Sebastian, would you be willing to explain this more concretely?
His comments don’t devolve into attacks, they start there.
Would you be willing to enumerate some of these attacks? I see Carlton’s writings as acerbic and aggressive, but often insightful. I’m beginning to suspect that different groups of people here mean very different things when they use the word “attack” and I’d like to verify that’s not the case.
Also, might I make a suggestion? It doesn’t look good when the right of center posters gang up on a commenter for bannings, threats of bannings, and general insults. At least it doesn’t look good to me. Now, it is your blog and you can do whatever you want. But there are some things you can’t do without losing other people’s respect. Presumably, all my respect and $4.50 will buy you coffee at starbucks, so don’t take this too seriously. On the other hand, the only reason readers come back is because they respect the people involved.
In the future, when you wish to ban someone like Carlton, you may wish to ask hilzoy or Katherine or someone else not involved to intervene. I would certainly look on a banning more charitably if I knew that you had convinced a neutral third party of its necessity.
Perhaps I’m slow today; how does the bringing-up of that quote prove, indicate, suggest, or otherwise evidence that Charles is making an argument dishonestly?
Now, it just might suggest, etc that Charles is being inconsistent, but I don’t think you’re drawing a conclusion regarding bad faith that’s supportable. What’s worse, the conclusion is presented more or less as being foregone.
Possibly one of us is mistaken about what constitutes a bad faith argument, though. As always, it could be me.
Slarti did the banning, trying to cool things off a bit, and then he did the unbanning. He also criticized Charles’s own use of language.
The ban was never supposed to accomplish anything more than interrupt what I perceived to be an escalation of angry exchanges. It was never intended to last any longer than a couple of hours, at the outside. Carleton wasn’t the only guy who was pushing at the posting rules, just the one who made me sit up and take notice.
Possibly I committed some harm to Carleton, but I don’t think very many points have ever been weakened by the requirement for more time to think them over before expressing them. Again: I could be only a little bit right about that.
I also suggest that Charles and/or Sebastian take a little time off from commenting, as it seems at least one of them simply doesn’t see the point anymore. And hilzoy might be persuaded to change the password so I’m not tempted to take the wheel again, although the result in terms of today would mean roughly fifteen spambot tracks she’d have to have cleaned up herself. I hung up my cape voluntarily, but I’ve never been asked not to do some of the maintenance functions I do, even if sporadically.
I think it would be fairer to say that Slarti did the banning, for whatever reason, and kept it completely quiet until Carlton managed to evade the ban. Once the banning became public it was rescinded.
Silently disappearing commenters is somewhat disturbing. Ideally, when someone is forcibly removed from the conversation, that fact is widely known. I also find the paternalism inherent in “I think you need to relax but instead of saying that to your face directly, I’m going to cut you out of the conversation without explanation” charming but disturbing in its lack of transparency. Do lots of other people get silently banned? Are the silent banns imposed only on left wingers? Only on people that argue with Charles? I have no idea and that bothers me. I doubt this is a common occurrence, but who knows.
Again, as always, Slarti can do anything he wants at all. I just want to quietly point out that silent secret bannings don’t give me the warm and fuzzies and I doubt I’m alone in that regard.
I think Slarti would be an excellent candidate to fill a permanent moderator role of some sort. From what I’ve observed, Slarti has displayed nothing but good faith in his interactions on ObWi, in an official capacity or otherwise. I trust his judgment, regardless of any ideological differences we may have (FWIW).
I think that I’ve already explained upthread that I was unable to comment, but able to ban. Short of editing one of Carleton’s comments to advise him to consider backing off, then, I didn’t have much of a choice. You’re free to believe whatever you like, though.
Slarti,
I’m sorry, I had missed the bit about being unable to comment. That certainly changes things a bit.
Turbulence: I am confident–very confident–that Slarti would not hesitate to ban (temporary or otherwise) a disruptive right-leaning commenter. (TiO regulars probably know who I’m referring to *cough*).
I hope Hil and Co. DON’T take the keys away from you, Slarti. Frankly, Seb and von are right – the tone of discourse at ObWi has devolved recently, taking on a more personal tenor that isn’t healthy for informed discussion (and I don’t mean to imply that I’m saintly in this regard). Sometimes a ‘time out’ is warranted, if only to let heated tempers cool down and save a thread from permanent derailment. The only thing I’d recommend is that any bannings/active moderation be enforced with complete transparency and across-the-board consistency.
“And hilzoy might be persuaded to change the password so I’m not tempted to take the wheel again, although the result in terms of today would mean roughly fifteen spambot tracks she’d have to have cleaned up herself.”
So that means that the fifteen or so URLs I e-mailed to Hilzoy, over some 7-8 e-mails, to point out comment spam were a waste of time? Is there some way to know who one should e-mail, since there’s no way of knowing who, if anyone, ever, will respond to e-mail to the kitty, beyond, when she’s available, Hilzoy?
Don’t get all mushy on me, matttbastard.
To wrap up a whole bunch of like comments into one messy generalization, you know things have gotten really off-kilter when I’m being the voice of reason.
Gary, I have no idea. The kitten doesn’t forward email; in fact, I have no idea how to even access kittenmail. Maybe I’m using the wrong web bowser.
Or if I’m backing up the ‘wingnuts’.
/grin
“The only thing I’d recommend is that any bannings/active moderation be enforced with complete transparency and across-the-board consistency.”
Although I continue to believe that posting rules should be kept as short as practical, and that one has to ignore the absolutely inevitable rules-lawyering one is presented with as rules grow more specific or detailed, I continue to believe what I’ve said since the rules were first declared, which is that they should be a lot clearer, and that there should be a clear and transparent mechanism for appeal, and that there should be a mechanism to ensure consistency, rather than just relying on a random spotting of a comment by a blog-owner, who then arbitrarily and unilaterally responds — on random occasion. Thus resulting in constant rules violations, and occasional, random, utterly inconsistent, enforcement — and big surprise, there are thus endless violations of the posting rules out of ignorance.
I’d also again point out that no one understands that the rule against profanity isn’t understood by anyone to be generated by concern over software filters, rather than priggishness, because there’s no such information written down in the rules, and apparently offenders are supposed to magically be aware of this.
But I’ve pointed this out dozens of times before, to no effect, so these are presumably all problematic suggestions, and things are as they should be, according to the desires of the blog-owners. (Sometimes I feel like ObWi suffers somewhat from a tragedy of the commons, but it’s impossible to know, because of the utter opacity and level of mystery that the managment chooses to prefer.)
“Gary, I have no idea. The kitten doesn’t forward email; in fact, I have no idea how to even access kittenmail.”
Thus an example of what I mean about opacity. This isn’t conducive to the idea that behind the scenes, it’s a well-thought-out, effective, set of mechanisms dealing with problems and setting policy, and not just a series of random, uncoordinated, haphazard improvisations.
But that impression is probably wrong, and in fact there is a fair and effective, thought-out, system at work.
What Gary said.
To return to a point way, way, way upthread, my agreement with the comments of Sebastian and Charles to the effect that “ObWi may not be worth doing anymore” has little to do with the direction of this thread — and nothing to do with Gary personally. It has to do with the fact that ObWi is no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, a place where left and right and meet on equal terms. Whether recognized by the left-leaning commentariat or not, the comment threads on this blog are hostile territory. It’s not one person; it’s not five; it’s not ten. It’s a tone that gets picked up and emphasized by different folks at different times.
It’s also reflected on the front page: Our left-leaning frontpagers can essentially recite Democratic talking points or attack conservative ideas in quite extreme terms. A modest critique from the right, however, provokes outrage more often than not. (I recognize that some folks will view this as simply applying standards, in that most ideas from the left are brilliant whilst most ideas from the right are idiotic. I assure you that there are many on the right who hold the ideas of such folks in equal disdain.)
It is tiring for me — a pretty moderate libertarian/classic liberal — to post here and then read comment after comment that appear either to (i) determined to miss the point of the post, (ii) determined to make some point that may at best tangentially related to my post, or (iii) both. Worse, the standards to which folks on the right are held are unimaginably higher than those on the left: all the lefty assumptions that support a Hilzoy post, for instance, on subject X are shared by the vast majority of the commentariat and thus go unchallenged. The same grace is not applied to a rightward-leaning post. I can’t imagine how must more tiring it is for Sebastian or Charles, who are decidedly to the right of me.
Simply put, it is difficult to be a righty, even a moderate one, on a blog of the left. To use an imperfect example, consider how many regulars feel when the post on RedState.com: the sense of being beseiged is similar (if not nearly as extreme.)
Cry no rivers for me, strum no violins; but please accept it as a fact, and a factor in my comment above.
As for banning policy: My personal perception is that ObWi has been far too lenient to improperities on the left, while quick to ban those on the right. This is in part because we are a left-wing blog.
In the past, when I have issues I need to raise, I’ve taken to emailing Hilzoy and the few other admins whose email addresses I possess directly. Since emails to the kitten inevitably end up with a response from one of them directly anyway, it seems sensible to cut out the middleman.
However, this is not exactly a practice that lends itself to being duplicated by the average commenter who has not, at some point, corresponded with one or more of them.
I continue to think ObWi should bring in another 2-3 conservative or libertarian bloggers, Von; I’ve consistently and repeatedly urged this, time and time and time again. (I imagine you won’t have seen at least four-fifths of my comments on this.) I urged that this be done before any thought was given to bringing in another non-conservative or libertarian blogger. Over and over and over again.
Once again, I’ll ask if you might not find a few conservative or libertarian bloggers, who otherwise write well, are knowledgeable, able to muster some courtesy and fair-mindedness, and give them a forum?
After all, it wasn’t us commenters who have lacked for agitating for this, and it wasn’t us commenters who haven’t brought in new conservative or libertarian bloggers. The only people to blame for not doing this are the people with the ability to do this: you, Hilzoy, Andrew, Charles, and Sebastian. (I take Edward as having de facto retired, even though his name is still on the sidebar.)
Please take action to fix the situation, rather than complain to other people, who have no power to bring in new bloggers, if you’d be so kind.
At least you’re around for this iteration of the discussion, unlike the last ten times.
I think the problem is that in transferring blog ownership from Moe, a number of difficulties have arisen that can only be dealt with by starting over. However, this would entail either losing everything or someone actually getting in up to their elbows and transferring all the files, etc. Email forwarding is probably one of those things. The fact that people are working hard at keeping the system going makes (at least to me) gary’s sarcasm less a gentle jab and more like an accusation of laziness, though I am sure that gary had no such intent and was just trying to be humorous.
This is just an observation with no actual inside knowledge, but I have found that things are working reasonably well, people are quite happy with uncoordinated haphazard improvisations, and such a system shouldn’t be held up as some sort of lack of moral fiber on the part of the powers that be.
This topic we’ve moved onto could perhaps use a housekeeping thread of its own.
A regular mechanism for triggering such housekeeping threads might also be a useful practice.
As might some regularization of keeping one open thread around on the front page at all time.
Just suggestions, of course. Many people might have suggestions, if they were given a regular place to air them.
My last comment refers to the moderation policies, not to the lack of a right leaning front pagers.
“more like an accusation of laziness,”
No, I wasn’t accusing anyone of laziness. I am saying that there’s a level of opacity about ObWi mechanisms that is perhaps beyond what is optimal or desirable.
Beyond that, due to the opacity, I can only speculate, which I’d prefer not to do. Which is a key part of my point.
Beyond that, yes, I have wondered how much thought anyone has put into ObWi’s systems and practices since Moe left, but one can’t discuss that without first piercing some of the opacity.
Obviously, if most people think things are jim-dandy, then I have no reasonable grounds for doubt or complaint or question.
Von,
I won’t gainsay your perceptions of how things work here at ObWi, since I think they’re largely correct in terms of the ideological mix and the differing receptions given the left-leaning commenters as compared with the right-leaning commenters. I disagree with some of the specifics, but that could also simply be a matter of perceptions.
However, aside from your comment about differing standards, I don’t think you’re giving enough consideration to /why/ things are the way they are.
I’ve been commenting at Obsidian Wings for over four years now, and in that time it has, undeniably, drifted leftward. But it hasn’t done so through some mysterious deus ex machina, nor by any concerted effort by the nebulous and differentiated left to invade it and upset its ideological balance.
I submit that the balance has shifted because by and large, it’s gotten much harder over these past four years to defend the Republican party in general, the Bush Administration in particular, and conservatism by association. At least, not with any kind of honesty or consistency.
That shouldn’t be taken as any kind of blanket slur against Republicans or conservatives. I think we’ve all made more than enough disclaimers and caveats for one lifetime as to how we recognize that people like you and Sebastian are, no matter how we might disagree with you, decent and honest people.
Rather, it’s simply an acknowledgement that we are right now governed by a truly malignant and corrupt administration who has caused and continues to cause real material harm to this country and others–and that this administration is still enthusiastically backed by the Republican party machine.
It’s hard to defend them. If I were a Republican, I wouldn’t want to, and even if I thought the Democrats would be worse when it comes to my ideological goals, I’d have a really hard time mounting a defense in blog comments with any enthusiasm. I’d like to think that I’d have the integrity and moral fiber to take stands on torture and lawlessness the way you and Sebastian have even when it brings me into conflict with my party–but for a lot of Republicans, I imagine it’s easier just to stop commenting and fighting a battle they don’t want to fight in defense of an administration and party they don’t think currently deserves their loyalty.
Conversely, Democrats and liberals are, largely, still pretty fired up and angry about the state of the country. It’s easy for us to muster righteous anger and dismay over the wrongs of the Bush administration and Republican party, and when we see someone writing what looks to us like a defense of the indefensible, we descend en masse.
It is, all in all, not the least bit hard to understand why ObWi has drifted left, as most conservatives either stop commenting or migrate to echo chambers like Redstate where they don’t have to be rigorously challenged about things they don’t have the energy or desire to defend.
I acknowledge that that makes it uncomfortable for people like you, Von. I’m sorry about that, and I do wish that we–and I include myself here–could ease off a bit sometimes if we care about preserving the unique mixture of opinions and viewpoints here at ObWi. But the ideological balance is what it is, and it’s that way for completely organic reasons, and not out of any desire on the part of liberals to drive you out or make things hostile for you here.
What Catsy said.
Insert the favorite word of Rush Limbaugh fans here.
We could conceivably do a little less sahel, though.
Perhaps Obsidian Wings can still stand for not engaging in sahel?
I’ve had two comments that I put a bit of effort into eaten by typepad, so pardon me if I seem short here:
@Gary: My reference to the cable and dish capacity wasn’t meant to be an argument for the nonrenewal of broadcast license not being a free speech issue — simply a clarification of facts. Especially since, from the post title down through the thread, including my own comments, what’s happened to RCTV has been referred to with the inaccurate shorthand of “shut down”. However, I can see that to avoid the impression that I was making that argument, I should not have inserted it parenthetically but made it its own sentence and introduced it as clarifying information rather than any kind of argument.
Nell,
I read the McElwee bit and I was less than impressed. I think AI’s, HRW’s, the IAPA and CPJ make compelling counter arguments.
Just for the record, with regard to this comment of yours, Venezuela has obligations under the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) with regard to freedom of expression:
The IADC was used – and correctly so – by the Chavez government to rally support for his cause after the coup attempt in 2002. It’s no less relevant now.
The EU also brings up an important point:
It’s not merely the denial of renewal that should disturb advocates of free expression; it’s the immediate conversion of the spectrum to a government channel.
Those are my italics, btw in the quote from the EU. Sorry.
@Charles: I’m glad you read my comments, especially as they represent a substantial percentage of the comments in this thread addressing the post topic directly (as opposed to meta and civility issues).
However, to clarify — I referred back to my comments about the Chavez administration having only arrested/prosecuted a very small number of the most senior people who incited violence and participated in the coup not in order to make some point about Chavez’ benevolence or failure to capitalize politically on the coup, but to show that you were making a false inference when you argued that RCTV must not have been inciting violence because they were not arrested.
Virtually all the privately owned TV, radio, and papers were openly supporting the coup; RCTV was not alone in encouraging citizens to take part in toppling the government by extra-electoral, extra-constitutional means. This included encouraging viewers to fight Chavez supporters in the streets, and to help shut down the community radio stations and papers in neighborhoods where Chavez had support.
They also all published the lie that Chavez had resigned, and then refused for a full day to give any coverage to Chavez’ return to being in control of his office. In the next several years, none of the executives of these media were arrested, or charged, or prosecuted.
(During the coup, one RCTV executive resigned in disgust at the network’s activities. He went to work for the Chavez administration.)
Thanks, Nell, and Randy.
I should have emphasized that the piece I previously linked is very much worth reading by everybody. I’d certainly be curious as to Charles’ reaction.
Randy, thanks for the point about Venezuela’s responsibilities under the IADB, which come into play whether or not there are free speech protections in the Venezuelan constitution.
I criticized in an earlier comment the government’s immediate conversion of the broadcast frequency; the new information in your EU quote is that the Chavez govt had made promises about an award process.
I brought up the McElwee article not to say that I think the RCTV nonrenewal has nothing to do with free speech, but to counter Sebastian’s overheated characterizations with a demonstration that there are questions to discuss.
The CPJ claims to be concerned only with the lack of process, something I criticized in my first point. True, my criticisms were pragmatic and tactical; I just can’t muster much principled moral outrage on behalf of Sr. Granier.
On the Latin American demilitarization front: let’s start with Colombia.
Now that both the destabilization/coup and referendum have failed to bring down Chavez, and with the U.S. establishing bases in most other oil regions, how crazy would Venezuelans have to be to demilitarize?
1. What Catsy said, except in bold, italicized capitals.
2. This, I think, is incorrect:
. Just about every major banning I can think of, with a couple of notable exceptions (i.e., Trevino), was of someone who would be perceived as left-wing. Consider, for example, how often and how quickly Don Quixote has been banned over time; whereas bril has, until yesterday, essentially been permitted to call Katherine and hilzoy traitors at will for about a year with no repercussions.
Nell,
I really don’t think it would be crazy at all. Despite the fervid rantings of the Miami anti-Castro amen corner and the end of the Soviet Union, no invasion of Cuba has taken place, for which I am grateful, my distaste for Castro notwithstanding. I see absolutely no reason to believe that any attempt would be made on Venezuela (the tacit support granted to the 2002 coup mongers aside). The American public’s distaste for unilateral interventions and a healthy skepticism of our leaders’ unfounded claims may be the silver linings in the cloud known as Iraq.
Much of the money from demilitarization could be spent on infrastructure, and there is no shortage of infrastructure needs in Venezuela and most of Latin America.
Perhaps I’m slow today; how does the bringing-up of that quote prove, indicate, suggest, or otherwise evidence that Charles is making an argument dishonestly?
Now, it just might suggest, etc that Charles is being inconsistent, but I don’t think you’re drawing a conclusion regarding bad faith that’s supportable. What’s worse, the conclusion is presented more or less as being foregone.
Possibly one of us is mistaken about what constitutes a bad faith argument, though. As always, it could be me.
Im saying that I found Charles’s two positions to be close to incomprehensible as nonpolitical expressions of a general speech/press right. I admit, I started with the tentative conclusion that Charles’s positions were ideologically determined- but I don’t think that’s unreasonable, since Im still at a loss to come up with a rationale that justifies blowing one station up but doesn’t even allow the other to not have it’s license renewed.
By posting the quote, and by trying to provide hypotheticals and probe at boundaries, I think I was giving Charles ample opportunity to clarify his position & demonstrate that he had, in fact, arrived at these positions consistently. I made several attempts at this, but I was met with only one attempt at a response (ie invoking the 1st amendment), and that didn’t make any more sense to me than the original distinction.
I would’ve liked to have gone further- since Charles couldn’t reasonably mean that foreigners ought to act by the technical details of our jurisprudence (eg ‘joking’ death threats are Ok), presumably he meant that there were underlying principles that he could elucidate.
Instead, I got what I consider to be arguing in bad faith. Leaving aside questions of who escalated what when, the arguments Charles presented were IMO intentionally non-responsive. eg distorting what RCTV was alleged to have done, raising the weird distinction between hating Chavez and hating his policies, and accusing me of saying he wanted to bomb the station.
I may step over the politeness line, but I don’t think I can reasonably be accused of not responding to points, or being misleading.
Now, if he doesn’t want to talk to me at all, that’s fine. But to post voluminously & yet never really address the points being discussed, and then finally claim that the discussion is going nowhere- to me, Im left with my original tentative conclusion that Charles does not have a coherent position on speech or press rights, and is stating a political preference rather than one based on general principles. In fact, my conclusion was strengthened somewhat by Charles’s circular logic (assuming Chavez is authoritarian and hostile to speech rights in order to ‘prove’ he was) and his misrepresentation as to RCTV’s actions. Fudging the data to support conclusions is the action of someone who wants to reach those conclusions, not the action of someone dispassionately applying a set of principles.
I don’t think it’s necessary to approach discussion without having formed tentative conclusions; lacking that, we’d not really be able to get discussion off of the ground. I was, and am, perfectly open to the idea that Im mistaken about Charles, but I can hardly be persuaded if he refuses to substantively address the points being made.
Let me offer a counterexample from this thread here. Despite Gary’s explicit statement to the contrary, Seb construes his statements as being of the “yes, but” variety. Seb doesn’t take Gary at his word because Seb feels he has a justifiable position on the matter.
Im not saying anyone was right or wrong there, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable exchange- but it did involve someone not taking someone else at their word as to what they meant. Gary was given an opportunity to clarify, and both he & other commenters did so.
Possibly I committed some harm to Carleton…
Seconding matttbastard, I’ve got no complaints at all. Naturally I think Im not the only one, but I was certainly crowding the line if not stepping on it.
I see absolutely no reason to believe that any attempt would be made on Venezuela (the tacit support granted to the 2002 coup mongers aside)
There is the example of the contras as well; we don’t have to intervene directly, or even overtly, to cause serious military issues.
That and, while things are quiet today, they might be ugly a decade from now. Since they can’t build a military overnight, they’d need to be ramping up to be prepared for reasonable threats, even if those threats don’t appear likely today.
I mean, who would’ve thought in 1980 or 1985 we’d be at war with Iraq in 1991?
Cuba isn’t sitting on a big fat oil reserve.
Also, the U.S. support for the destabilization campaign and coup was a lot more than tacit.
On the other hand, I don’t have figures to hand on relative size and expenditures of Venezuela’s and Colombia’s military — all I’m absolutely sure of without a lot of research I can’t do right now is that Venezuela pays for its own mil expenditures, while you and I are not only subsidizing Colombia’s, but supplementing them with mercs in planes and helicopters. Another difference between the two countries would be the mining and other companies’ contribution, through their private security forces/paras.
But no matter what, until we have in place a U.S. administration that renounces preventive war, I won’t feel in a position to recommend to any government in Latin America how they should change their security arrangements. In fact, I don’t think I could do that in good conscience, period, unless my own government had started to cut its obscene military expenditures.
Good. It wasn’t my intention to drive you away, Carleton.
I was all for banning bril, but he provided for some occasional comic relief, and God knows we get all too little of that here. I haven’t exactly been actively involved here, through my own choice, and possibly that could change some, but the long and short of it is that I’ve been not doing any maintenance, banning, etc at all until very recently. I figured that if hilzoy took offense, or if bril ever came back to defend himself, he was out of here. And he is, sort of, except when he foils the next layer of our pathetic defenses, here.
Yet we did sponsor a failed limited invasion of Cuba in 1962, and only swore of repeating the effort because it was part of the deal made with Krushchev over the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In the context of the relatively historically recent invasions of Panama and Grenada by the U.S., which is in the context of over a century’s worth of U.S. doctrine overtly starting our right to militarily intervene in the Western Hemisphere, which itself is in the context of the Mexican-American War, as we’ve been reminded in another thread, and not to mention our history of “covert” action south of our border, I can’t say that I think it’s particularly crazy for a country that isn’t prepared to march in lock-step with the U.S., or all of its neighbors, to hesitate to completely de-militarize, either, noble an idea as it is, and as well as it can work out in various — but not all — circumstances.
But to try to be clear: I’m not attacking the notion that demilitarization could work, and I’m not saying it isn’t a reasonable thing to advocate.
I’m just defending the notion that it might not be the only defensible position to take.
Gary, that was a thoroughly unsettling article. I’ve suspected or intuited a lot of it, but to have it laid out by someone who seems to know what they’re talking about is, well, not so good. Thank you for the link.
Catsy’s said exactly what I think needs to be said right now about politics across the American spectrum. One of the genuine mysteries of this decade for me is why people like OCSteve and John Cole stand out so much rather than being two among hundreds of thousand or millions publicly voicing disgusted dissent and doing something about it. There never has been a Democratic administration so far removed from the moral center of America since Andrew Jackson’s, but whenever the Democrats have strayed into their own vice and weirdness, there’ve been challenges. The Republicans seem in the grip of a machine more effective than any since the dawn of the 20th century and more thoroughly vile in more ways than just about any of its predecessors, and the continued acquisience by the rank and file in this strikes me (and others, I’m sure) as puzzling and then infuriating.
If this means that I too am part of the problem and should go, then I will.
Cuba isn’t sitting on a big fat oil reserve.
Really?
Gary,
It’s worked fine for Costa Rica, which resisted the Reagan administration’s pressure to reëstablish their military.
It’s also worth noting that most of those militaries have played a pivotal role in US supported coups. The role of the military in Latin America has tended to be more like Praetorian Guards than defenders of the nation. I’m not saying it should be done tomorrow, but a phased demilitarization would be good.
“It’s worked fine for Costa Rica, which resisted the Reagan administration’s pressure to reëstablish their military.”
Yes, I’m quite aware, which is why I wrote But to try to be clear: I’m not attacking the notion that demilitarization could work, and I’m not saying it isn’t a reasonable thing to advocate.
“I’m not saying it should be done tomorrow, but a phased demilitarization would be good.”
And I agree. I’m simply noting that one can also defend not doing it tomorrow.
I’ve remarked previously on what Catsy said above, but since it’s worth repeating — especially as eloquently as he did — well, me too.
von: Worse, the standards to which folks on the right are held are unimaginably higher than those on the left: all the lefty assumptions that support a Hilzoy post, for instance, on subject X are shared by the vast majority of the commentariat and thus go unchallenged.
Then challenge them. I know, easier said than done. The problem that I have with this observation is that — no offense — most of such challenges I’ve seen here are either weak or premised in things which are just plain wrong. This isn’t to say that better challenges don’t exist, mind, just that I rarely see them here.
[It’s basically for the reasons Catsy noted, btw, which doesn’t make it a whole lot easier on anyone, I know.]
A tiny country resisting U.S. pressure to militarize is one thing.
Posing a giant challenge to U.S. interests, self-funding that challenge with the country’s own resources, bordering a country in which the army, paramilitary, and guerrillas are armed to the teeth and in an active state of war… It’s not exactly Costa Rica.
Randy, if you have figures to contribute, this is an issue I’m interested in. But it’s not at all an issue that can be usefully looked at in isolation. A U.S. government that wants to encourage demilitarization without being laughed out of the room is going to have to take some serious steps to clean up its own house.
Nell,
Costa Rica borders Nicaragua and Panama and I surely don’t need to tell you that in the 1980’s those were strategic borders it held: a civil war taking place in one country and a drugrunner controlling the other. I believe that the comparison is apt.
The problem is that the US government doesn’t want to encourage demilitarization in Latin America. I certainly do.
Von: It has to do with the fact that ObWi is no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, a place where left and right and meet on equal terms. Whether recognized by the left-leaning commentariat or not, the comment threads on this blog are hostile territory. It’s not one person; it’s not five; it’s not ten. It’s a tone that gets picked up and emphasized by different folks at different times.
Yup. Agreed. And all the rest of what you said. I consider myself a moderate, but some days here, I may as well be eating babies, or whatever it is conservatives are now readily accused of. There are exceptions of course – and that is the only reason I come back. There are good people here, period, without regard to ideology.
Von: Thanks for your participation here of late. You seem to come by in spurts, then disappear for a while, but I think your timing is good when you do come by.
Charles: I’ll state for the record that:
1. Your posts have been very moderate of late.
2. You still get piled on to a degree I find disconcerting.
3. You (mostly) engage in comments reasonably.
4. See # 2.
5. I am impressed that you bother.
Anarch: The problem that I have with this observation is that — no offense — most of such challenges I’ve seen here are either weak or premised in things which are just plain wrong.
That is a little bit too general I think.
“…but some days here, I may as well be eating babies, or whatever it is conservatives are now readily accused of.”
Supporting George W. Bush. It isn’t the same thing?
😉
“His comments don’t devolve into attacks, they start there.
Would you be willing to enumerate some of these attacks?”
Sure, Carleton’s first entry on this very thread did not even mention Venezuala. His entire first entry on this thread was centered around questioning the motive of “Charles The Fighter For Freedom Of The Press?”
And here I am going to equate him to bril directly which I did not do before–like bril he thought that having a post which did absolutely nothing other than question the motive of the messenger was an appropriate way to begin the conversation.
His second entry on the thread was directed at me. It began with:
Here he continues his attack on Charles, while resorting to brilliant and witty, at least by the measure of the second-grade, slurs for me. The nice thing for the ‘context’ of this particular thread as it has developed is that he specifically admits that he intended the attack on Charles which others here now seem to overlook.
He continues that comment with only the mildest pretense of addressing anything in the post:
At least he finally gets to the ‘yes, but’ argument to vaguely link his attack to something in the thread. Like bril, he sometimes at least remembers which thread he is posting on when making his character attacks. Also like bril, he won’t even the most humble of concessions to his enemy’s (I won’t say opponent’s) good faith, instead extending the deficits he notices or projects onto them nearly ad infinitum.
He doesn’t go back and forth through a tough set of comments and then eventually fall into attacks. That would be a regretable but all too human thing for hot-headed debaters. We all do that.
He starts there, and continues there, and ends there. Internally he appears to make a virtue of it with his pearl clutching: “Perhaps my offense is not relenting when pointing out the mistakes of posters. If bringing up Charles’s previous posts when I think they’re not consistent with his current views is out of bounds, I dont know that Id want to be here in any case. If front-pagers can practice unprovoked ad hominem and gratuitous insults but cannot even handle having their own words quoted back at them, then there are some beams that need to be cast out of some eyes.”
Oh, the pain you must feel to have the burden of being right so often.
Oh. The. Pain.
This may not, perhaps, be the best example of a non-ad hominem, substantive, comment, leading to a higher quality of discussion, with a blog-owner showing us such an example of what sort of tone should be set.
The quoted portion comes in the context of a much larger comment.
I had pointed jabs about ‘context’ in the context of this thread typed three or four times but I won’t share them, because those would definitely not be in a spirit of comity.
Suffice to say, if you disagree with the substantive portions of the comment, I invite you to address them. If you believe my description of Carleton’s defense is inaccurate, please feel free to disagree.
I will however admit that Carleton inspires the nastier side of me–a side which I don’t particularly like, and which is an unfair reason for me to dislike him.
So you may not be entirely wrong about that.
[deep breath]
Sebastian: From my point of view, Carleton is dealing with a particular problem the only way I really know to deal with it. Charles makes a lot of claims in absolute terms – this is right, that’s wrong. But in practice he doesn’t actually hold them absolutely. They are subject to modification – this is right except when it conflicts with that need, this is generally wrong but useful in these circumstances.
Now, I don’t think that Charles wakes up and thinks anything like “Ha ha, I’m gonna snow ’em again with my principles that are actually negotiable.” A self-conscious con man would do things Charles doesn’t, and wouldn’t do a lot of things Charles does. But Charles is also very strongly resistant to examining his claims when others see signs of possible inconsistency; he gives me the impression of having a very great deal of sense of self tied up in being a person governed strongly by principles, resisting the whim of circumstance to hold fast to a constant course. I’m sure, based on my own experience, that it’s not fun for many people to be told “here are reasons to believe you’re being inconsistent in this virtue you champion”, but more so when that consistency is such an important part of self.
In such a situation, I don’t know any way to usefully communicate the important message “this doesn’t add up to me” without the kind of thing Carleton and Gary do. It would be much less necessary if more of Charles’ posts came with caveats like “I support freedom of the press except when it threatens vital national interests or supports our enemies” – which would cover both trying to suppress domestic dissent via market means and destroying the physical plant of enemy-supporting broadcasters abroad. Likewise with something like “I think people are entitled to self-representation except when our vital interests are at stake”, and so on. It would be possible to discuss the guidelines and the specific cases more separately, but not when Charles insists that there simply aren’t any contradictions or changes at work.
At least this is my own frustration, and may be others’ too.
That is a little bit too general I think.
Depends on which challenges you’re thinking of, and there’s a very good reason I used “most” instead of “all”. YMMV, natch.
“From my point of view, Carleton is dealing with a particular problem the only way I really know to deal with it. Charles makes a lot of claims in absolute terms – this is right, that’s wrong. But in practice he doesn’t actually hold them absolutely. They are subject to modification – this is right except when it conflicts with that need, this is generally wrong but useful in these circumstances.”
If that is Carleton’s intention, he isn’t doing a good job of it. If that was the intention you could easily ask to distinguish the RCTV/Globovision cases from the al-Zawraa case. Or you could argue that they were the same. Carleton doesn’t do this (IMHO because it looks rather ridiculous on the actual facts to directly equate the two) instead he merely throws it out there.
Second, why is it necessary IN THIS POST to do so anyway? What is it about THIS POST that REQUIRES it to be reconciled? When bril comments on hilzoy’s torture posts, he would say things about how bad various organizations are. These things are only relevant IF TORTURE WERE ACTUALLY EFFECTIVE AT COMBATING THESE BAD ORGANIZATIONS. Talking about whether or not they do so, could be a fruitful contribution to the conversation. Raising it with the assumption that torture is effective isn’t.
Likewise, raising the contradiction without a point is not constructive. Does Carleton believe that Chavez is justified? (We find out much much later, that the answer is kind of ‘no’.) Ok, so does he believe the situations are analytically identical? His initial ‘argument’ suggests yes, though we find out that isn’t really true either. But if you want to have an a useful conversation you have to raise what you feel are contradictions AND say how they apply to the situation at hand. If you don’t, like Gary’s amorphous pleas for context, it lends the appearance of either just attacking the author, or defending Chavez.
Sebastian, this is the post at hand. As I understand it, the essence of Charles’ post is “Here’s another reason Chavez is bad and should go – look at what he’s doing to the media.” Given that, the question of what Charles thinks about other media situations seems really, really oviously relevant to me. If I tell you “don’t vote for Bob, he’s going push for national health care” and you remember that I’m in favor of national health care, producing my earlier statement to that effect seems like a useful and focused thing to do. And I don’t see that it’s really necessary or even necessarily all that helpful to add anything much beyond “But Bruce, last week you said this.”
“As I understand it, the essence of Charles’ post is “Here’s another reason Chavez is bad and should go – look at what he’s doing to the media.” Given that, the question of what Charles thinks about other media situations seems really, really oviously relevant to me.”
I’m not sure I buy that this is the essence of his post but let’s say it is.
Relevant in what way? You aren’t voting for charles, you are talking to him. What do YOU think about media situations? Unless you are going to doubt the truth of the situation, doesn’t what you think govern?
Carleton’s approach is a gotcha approach. He didn’t try to analyze or explore how the situations were different or similar. He doesn’t even ask Charles to do so. He merely asserts that they are similar enough for a slur.
Bril, you were banned. I haven’t seen you ask for permission to return. Your post was deleted for that reason.
And here I am going to equate him to bril directly which I did not do before–like bril he thought that having a post which did absolutely nothing other than question the motive of the messenger was an appropriate way to begin the conversation.
Speaking of not giving people the benefit of the doubt- several people seem to have grasped the nature of my point. I spelled it out pretty clearly- Charles’s argument depended on a premise that I thought was questionable, and that IMO he himself had not supported in a different case.
If you want to say I was unnecessarily nasty about it, I can see that. But claiming that quoting someone is attacking them, I just don’t see it.
Like bril, he sometimes at least remembers which thread he is posting on when making his character attacks.
Love to see an example of me posting something wildly off-topic. I really hope it’s not this: Carleton’s first entry on this very thread did not even mention Venezuala.
Thread is about press freedom in Venezuela. I post something about press freedom someplace else. Again, you might object to the tone, but to object in principle to posts about non-Venezuelan press freedom is not even slightly reasonable.
Oh, the pain you must feel to have the burden of being right so often.
Gary already pointed this out, but you’re not exactly pouring water on the fire here- more like gasoline. Well, I guess you get the last laugh on this one since I can’t respond in kind.
Second, why is it necessary IN THIS POST to do so anyway? What is it about THIS POST that REQUIRES it to be reconciled?
Obviously, nothing is *necessary*. Bruce (thanks again) did an excellent job of stating the basic case, though, as to why Charles’s earlier comments are interesting and relevant.
You might have found my tone out of line, but this whole routine about my comments being inexplicable or nonsensical is weird- like you need to make me into a boogeyman in order to justify your actions.
Carleton’s approach is a gotcha approach. He didn’t try to analyze or explore how the situations were different or similar.
Well, my first post didn’t; I assumed that the context made the meaning clear. When you became confused about how this related to plants, I spelled it out it great detail and asked repeatedly for clarification. I even created several hypotheticals for that purpose. Of course, at that point perhaps the conversation was too poisoned, but you certainly can’t claim I didn’t try.
So, if your terrible accusation here is that my first post was not as clear as it could have been- well, Im d@mned to heck for that one.
No, your first three posts were very clear. They are why I said you weren’t interested in a discussion.
The only thing you have spelled out in great detail is that you think Charles is a hypocrite. You don’t express interest in the Chavez situation EXCEPT AS TO HOW YOU CAN USE IT TO SHOW THAT CHARLES IS A HYPOCRITE. You don’t even express interest in the al-Zawraa case EXCEPT AS TO HOW YOU CAN USE IT TO SHOW THAT CHARLES IS A HYPOCRITE.
You aren’t expressing interest in the underlying issues at all, except to use them as tools to try to hit Charles for whatever personal reason you have. That is rather ironic considering that your main recurring charge against Charles is that he slants discussions of topics to further his political ends.
Hey SH, think I agree with you here without having gone over the above unpleasantness again – but you seemed stressed out and I’m going to urge you to have a libation and send me the bill – or better yet, send it to John Thullen, who I blame for not being around to distract us.
I will frankly to confess to not caring a lot about the Venezuelan situation. I mean, yes, I wish for peace, justice, and happiness there, as I do everywhere. But it’s low on the list of things I actually give a lot of emotion too, particularly at a time when my own government remains by far the most active threat to peace, justice, and happiness worldwide. (China could be a bigger threat if its leaders chose to be. Maybe Russia, too, depending on just what the status of its Soviet legacy of weaponry is. But neither actually is at this point mounting unjustified wars with reckless abandon or busily making some other kinds of mess.)
Yesterday was my father’s birthday, the first since he died last year, and I spent part of yesterday and today very much literally in tears as I thought about what the Republican machine and its collaborators in politics and the media did with the legacy of men and women like my Dad. Dad fought in a war in which the enemy was known to be bad because (among other reasons) the enemy launched unprovoked wars against other nations and tortured its captives. Now such things are the fodder of good cheer and levity for one of the two major parties. As a nation, we suck. I’d like us to suck a lot less than we do. But I don’t see how earnest dudgeon about other nations doing much lighter stuff than is our own nation’s policy actually helps us suck less. It seems like a distraction from our own job.
I can’t be the only one who ever worked on a job with someone who was full of everyone else’s business, constantly poking and prying, and who ended up neglecting their own so much that others had to bail them out. Posts like this one of Charles’ frankly feel much the same way to me. Maybe I’d take it better from someone who didn’t keep pushing the fortunes of the party that’s responsible for our current disasters quite so much, or who seemed to be doing anything about them. (This is one of the reasons I respect OCSteve so much, by the way: Steve’s practical. He votes in ways that can’t be comfortable or fun, but with an eye on where he wants us to be going, and he doesn’t le the fact of it being uncomfortable and un-fun stop him if it seems right in the bigger scheme of things. I like to think that I approach my civic obligations the same way, but I’m sure not going to claim that I’m perfect at it.) It feels…irrelevant, like fretting about the neighbors’ malnourished hedge while our house burns down.
Since you seemed to wonder, Sebastian.
The only thing you have spelled out in great detail is that you think Charles is a hypocrite. You don’t express interest in the Chavez situation EXCEPT AS TO HOW YOU CAN USE IT TO SHOW THAT CHARLES IS A HYPOCRITE. You don’t even express interest in the al-Zawraa case EXCEPT AS TO HOW YOU CAN USE IT TO SHOW THAT CHARLES IS A HYPOCRITE.
1)mindreading foul
2)your theory doesn’t explain why I went through all of the trouble to construct those hypotheticals, probe for differences, etc. Except maybe I was covering my @ss, anticipating that my nefarious mission might be revealed.
(Of course, the fact that you have to limit yourself to the first 3 comments shows that you recognize that I was, in fact, trying to draw distinctions etc. Being inconvenient to your theory, these posts are ignored).
Why were my first 3 comments slanted? Well, the first one was the intro- as I said, maybe I didn’t spell things out clearly enough & came on too hard. The next two were responses to your outpouring of bile- if they weren’t further expositions of the topic, I believe that you’ll find the reason for this looking back at you from your bathroom mirror.
My 4th comment was in response to Charles who, while he did accuse me of various bad acts, at least confronted the actual question and made a response. Not a particularly useful one, but *he* tried- and got back a deeper probe into the question.
And you want to complain about my bad faith?
I dunno. Maybe I don’t believe in the viability of cross-spectrum dialogue anymore, or maybe it’s just that I don’t believe honest discourse is possible while trying to maintain that the administration and its party aren’t monstrous. I’m going to take some time off and think about it.
If anyone wants to ping me in the meantime, I take e-mail at bbaugh@mac.com and occasionally post now as a token non-liberarian at Jim Henley’s place, Unqualified Offerings.
“Yesterday was my father’s birthday, the first since he died last year”
That’s very hard. It’s very painful. I wish I could do something more useful to help, or find some helpful words of comfort, but none spring to mind this moment, and it’s not the sort of thing that bears waiting, but I wanted to acknowledge that while we all respond to these things in our own manner, and according to our own circumstances, that I’ve been through my own version of such losses, and have some vague possible approximation of how hard it can be, and that, well, I’m sorry I don’t know how to code virtual hug-packets, or proper empathetic particles, or whatever might otherwise best transmit anything at all that might help.
Best I can do is say that eventually it tends to get less raw. Hang in as best you can, but also take time off whenever it’s too wearing.
“Maybe Russia, too, depending on just what the status of its Soviet legacy of weaponry is. But neither actually is at this point mounting unjustified wars with reckless abandon or busily making some other kinds of mess.”
I was going to nitpick about Chechnya, but another time.
Gary: Thanks. (And yeah, I should have said “as many wars”. What with Chechnya, the ongoing occupation of Tibet, and all, it’s not like they’re paragons.) As for grief, I still don’t know much better than the way Neil Gaiman put it in Sandman, with the lord of dreams talking to his son:
MORPHEUS: You should have gone to her funeral.
ORPHEUS: Why?
MORPHEUS: To say goodbye.
ORPHEUS: I have not yest said goodbye to Eurydice.
MORPHEUS: You should. You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times, the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.
That seems to be the way it goes. Mostly I’m trying to do things that would make Dad feel I’d learned the best of his lessons and put them to good use.
…and one of those things is “don’t batter your head against a wall just because the wall is there”, hence the disengaging for a while.
“Why were my first 3 comments slanted? Well, the first one was the intro- as I said, maybe I didn’t spell things out clearly enough & came on too hard. The next two were responses to your outpouring of bile- if they weren’t further expositions of the topic, I believe that you’ll find the reason for this looking back at you from your bathroom mirror.”
The first post was most certainly not an ‘intro’ you didn’t post again for hours and when you did you just continued as before. And the second and third in response to outpouring of bile? Are you refering to my 1:06 post? Be careful to note when your posts were made before answering.
“Of course, the fact that you have to limit yourself to the first 3 comments shows that you recognize that I was, in fact, trying to draw distinctions etc. Being inconvenient to your theory, these posts are ignored”
No, I picked the first ones because my thesis is that you start out with attacks and only if sorely pressed bother with anything else. But having read through the entire thread, I haven’t found many posts that were substantive. Since you seem impressed by them, lets go through them one by one.
June 1. 12:40 The “Charles The Fighter For Freedom Of The Press?” post. Attacks Charles.
2:03 “I’d have thought it was obvious enough for a retarded Irish Goose to grasp, but Ill spell it out ‘specially for you” post in which you specifically say that you aren’t interested in discussing the Dhavez situation but want to attack Charles for being a hypocrite. We could also call it the STFU post I suppose.
2:28 “Sure, you’re slow today, I don’t mind helping out. How about:
How dare such a network exercise its right to free speech.
In general, the indignation about the violation of speech rights.” In which you take one line from Charles’ post, and frankly a not all that odious line, and use it to justify your attacks. No substance so far.
2:36 You use the Chavez assertion that the stations assisted in the coup–never mind that he didn’t bother to go after the individuals and you have to use a rather loose definition of assisted. You say “I can barely imagine the state of your pretend indignation if Chavez had *blown up* the offending station” which is rather funny since Chavez has done worse–he took the station AS HIS OWN AND HAS BEGAN BROADCASTING HIS PROPAGANDA WITH IT. There is the inkling of substance finally.
2:39 You make the same error you accuse Charles of making with analogies.
7:36 You talk about getting banned
9:23 Insulted by being compared to bril, still no substance
June 2
6:07 Comment about tongue in cheek, still no substance.
6:55 A rant about Charles, but after six long paragraphs you finally have some substance:
If you had started with that, we could have mentioned things like: “Chavez didn’t shut the station down during or immediately after the coup, or a year later, or two years later, or three years later, or even four years later.” and drawn distinctions based on that. Or we could have mentioned that part of the ‘pro-coup’ charges that Chavez had against the stations was that they were attempting to televise the anti-Chavez demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of people on April 11, 2002 instead of broadcasting the 24 hour a day propaganda he demanded between the 9th and the 11th.
We could have noted that the idea that suggesting, as Chavez did, that the documentary about the assassination attempt on the pope (which is not flattering to the assassin) can be easily read as support for killing Chavez is a rather nutso idea.
We might have discussed that having a station member accused of helping the coup outside of the station doesn’t make for a great excuse to do anything other than remove him or jail him.
We could have had an interesting discussion about the differences and similarities between the two cases. Of course we couldn’t do that before, because this is the first time you bothered to lay out your position rather than snidely snark.
10:51 There isn’t much substance here either, though at least you are sort of trying to actually address things in two of the paragraphs though you avoid particularizing the discussion with “Im not really interested in re-explaining it or hunting up links, since you aren’t really interested in debating the issue.”
June 3
2:43 back to the completely ignoring any substantive issue and attacking Charles
2:58 Finally the substantive hypothetical. Almost two full days later.
4:29 more nothing
12:56 Still no substance, now just a defense of why it is ok to be nasty and sniping over the definition of ad hominem.
After this the whole discussion is very meta.
So let’s see. Out of the first 14 posts, it takes you until the 9th one to even approach a discussion of the topic. If we are very generous you have 3 or 4 total comments that are fairly substantive and two of them are still rather filled with bile.
I would say that the evidence suggests that you are far more interested in attacking Charles than discussing the issues raised by Chavez shutting down opposition television stations.
Sebastian – I have no problem with your critiquing Carleton this way (or with him responding in kind, as he has done and doubtless will do again). There’s plenty of bile and wretched excess to go around.
Where I get a little hinky is over the act of banning. I can see you (or CB) in a huff saying, “You’re Dead To Me!”, and refusing to communicate further with him, an arrangement we are already familiar with on ObWi, if I’m not mistaken. (This may be paraphrased as, “Tell Jesurgislac I’m not speaking to her!”)
But the power of some – but not all – of us to silence others entirely is one that should be used rarely, and IMHO none of what you have cited really warrants this.
Of course I’m not the one making the decisions.
I’m with rilkefan on this, it is clearly Thullen’s fault.
“Where I get a little hinky is over the act of banning. I can see you (or CB) in a huff saying, “You’re Dead To Me!”, and refusing to communicate further with him, an arrangement we are already familiar with on ObWi, if I’m not mistaken. (This may be paraphrased as, “Tell Jesurgislac I’m not speaking to her!”)”
I banned bril, not Carleton and him after a long period of warnings. I would suggest that a recurrent pattern like this would be worthy of banning, but while I have the vague impression that this is a pattern, I’m not going digging through the archives.
The only reason I went over it in depth, is because he seems to believe that this is desireable in the kind of conversation we want.
It isn’t.
I understand occassionally nasty things being said at the end of a long and ugly comment thread. I’m human, I understand that. That isn’t what this thread shows.
Absolutely nothing that Charles said in this post was worthy of the bitter sounding attacks that Gary gave at the beginning and that Carleton has maintained throughout.
You say “I can barely imagine the state of your pretend indignation if Chavez had *blown up* the offending station” which is rather funny since Chavez has done worse–he took the station AS HIS OWN AND HAS BEGAN BROADCASTING HIS PROPAGANDA WITH IT.
Assuming that the station is occupied at the time, I cannot agree that blowing it up is not at least an order of magnitude worse than commandeering it for propaganda purposes. YMMV.
FWIW, one of my first negative interactions with Charles came at the old Tacitus site, when he was in high dudgeon over Nipplegate, and wanting the FCC to do something about the scourge of Janet Jackson’s nipples. I asked him what harm was actually done to his children by this event, to which he responded that he was going to “toss me on the moron pile.” How this plays into the question of Charles vis a vis press freedom and Charles generally is left as an exercise for the reader.
Not that I support summary moron-piling for those who disagree with me, Phil, but there is a nontrivial difference between Freedom of the Press and Freedom to Say Whatever You Like In Blog Comments.
But this has been hashed, rehashed, served with the leftover hash, etc to the point where we’d just be recycling thrice-used (if we’re lucky) arguments.
Slarti, I haven’t read new comments since yesterday morning, and I’ll get through them. The “jerkoff” was reference was to the person’s comments, not the person. That’s not “name calling”, it’s an opinion of a collection of verbiage the person has made. It’s a harsh opinion, but it doesn’t cross any lines. Had I referred to him as an unbending intolerant ideologue, then that would’ve been name calling. So your admonishment is duly noted and duly rejected, and quite frankly I’m a little surprised that you didn’t see the distinction.
Basically, I’m completely fed up with being the brunt of Wu’s unfair attacks, thread after thread, particularly when my intellectually integrity and character are being impugned by his foisting unpalatable views onto me that I don’t ascribe to, as well as him using the lazy and dishonest practice of mindreading toward the same ends. When I’ve answered and rebutted his attacks, his responses have been to slip and slide the goalposts so that he can repeat the same dubious charges all over again. And all the while, his tone and tenor throughout the thread has poisoned the level of discourse in this thread, in my opinion.
For some reason, it appears that Wu mistakenly believes that “taking it as he sees it” somehow trumps the posting rules, particularly the one about “consistently abusing and vilifying for its own sake.” No one should operate under such a notion.
If I seem a little short-fused about this, it’s because Wu has been pulling this crap on at least two threads prior to this, starting with this post. It needs to end.
continue to think ObWi should bring in another 2-3 conservative or libertarian bloggers, Von; I’ve consistently and repeatedly urged this, time and time and time again. (I imagine you won’t have seen at least four-fifths of my comments on this.) I urged that this be done before any thought was given to bringing in another non-conservative or libertarian blogger. Over and over and over again.
That’s actually more difficult than it seems, Gary. We need to find someone(s) who are (i) acceptable to all of us, (ii) willing to venture into hostile territory, (iii) have at least some common ground with enough of the commentariat so as not to have to endure constant cries of “X is ruining the site and should be cast out!”, and (iv) if already established as a blogger, willing to take the hit among their conservative bretheren for association with, what is perceived (I think unfairly) as a radically left-wing blog. No one wants to be a sell-out.
We’re fortunate to have Charles and Sebastian, and Andrew Olmstead was an excellent addition as well. Who else is out there? (And, yes, feel free to submit names.)
“Absolutely nothing that Charles said in this post was worthy of the bitter sounding attacks that Gary gave at the beginning and that Carleton has maintained throughout.”
I’ve been trying really hard to not further discord, and to step back, and let you set an example, as a blog-owner, of the sort of tone that should exemplify ObWi, Sebastian.
I can’t congratulate you on doing a good job, so far, but you still have the opportunity to get over your ax to grind with Carleton, and do better, if you care to, although, of course, you may not care to at all.
However, you’ve been endlessly repeating your opinions about Carleton, and what you feel are the pointless and substanceless criticisms I and others made of Charles’ post. That’s fine, but it would be very helpful if you noted that your opinions are opinions, not objective facts, and while you’re perfectly entitled to your views, if you confuse them with objective facts, you’re going to wind up in communications difficulties with all the rest of us who happen to have different views than you do of Carleton’s style, and substance, and the validity of his critiques.
“Absolutely nothing that Charles said in this post was worthy of the bitter sounding attacks that Gary gave at the beginning and that Carleton has maintained throughout.”
You’re entitled to think so. But you might want to take note of the fact that numbers of your readers have disagreed, and have stated that they found considerable value in the various points brought up by critics of Charles’ post. Or you might not. Perhaps we’re all wrong, and thus our opinion is ridiculous, being so wrong, and should just be ignored.
But that still won’t convince said people that they’re wrong.
I don’t see much point in spending time trying to reply to your proofs of Carleton’s lack of substance, etc.; I simply register my profound difference of opinion and interpretation. If that simply registers with you as incomprehensible, or as proof of my lack of good faith, or whatever, that would be a shame, but there’s only so much I can do about that.
“Not that I support summary moron-piling for those who disagree with me, Phil, but there is a nontrivial difference between Freedom of the Press and Freedom to Say Whatever You Like In Blog Comments.”
Slart, Phil didn’t say anything about “Freedom to Say Whatever You Like In Blog Comments”; he said, in context of discussing Charles’ views of press freedom, vis-a-vis Chavez’ actions, that his, Phil’s, first experience with Charles was Charles attacking the tv network that broadcast the Super Bowl for not engaging in censorship.
My impression is that you missed his point, which had nothing whatever to do with “blog comments.” (You’re free to argue the relevance of his actual point, of course.)
I asked him what harm was actually done to his children by this event, to which he responded that he was going to “toss me on the moron pile.”
Phil, I don’t remember having said something about the “moron pile”. Maybe I did. But FTR, I never had the banning keys at Tacitus, so if you think that was a threat to ban, then you would be wrong. And what Slarti said.
Also, what Sebastian said, and thanks to him for his efforts at cataloguing the series of offending comments.
Virtually all the privately owned TV, radio, and papers were openly supporting the coup; RCTV was not alone in encouraging citizens to take part in toppling the government by extra-electoral, extra-constitutional means. This included encouraging viewers to fight Chavez supporters in the streets, and to help shut down the community radio stations and papers in neighborhoods where Chavez had support.
Nell, if you have sources which demonstrates that RCTV or others incited violence, I’d like to hear about them. You’ve supplied some pro-chavista links, so for the sake of context, here is an eyewitness account of the April 2002 coup from an anti-chavista. The private TV stations behaved poorly to be sure, particularly after Carmona was installed. Chavez also behaved poorly, with this Plan Colina and his shutting down of TV stations for a period.
I’d certainly be curious as to Charles’ reaction.
After having lived under a long string of strong rulers, no surprise about the sentiments from those politicians, particularly the Salafist, Gary. It certainly affirms why the factions are having so much trouble coming to an agreement on the national stage.
“Andrew Olmstead”
Andrew Olmsted, even. Whom I suggested in the first place.
It’s kinda silly to put the onus for finding conservative/libertarian posters on your liberal readers, though, von; I don’t read all that many such folks who aren’t either a) bloggers I like who are already successful on their own sites; or b) apparent lunatics.
Presumably you read a lot more such people towards your own ideological predilections, than I, or most other liberal types do.
Moreover, you complained that “[s]imply put, it is difficult to be a righty, even a moderate one, on a blog of the left.”
So, do something to change that. Stop putting the blame on others. Find a couple of non-left bloggers and make this less of a blog of the left. Just do it.
I suppose it might clarify my previous comment if I note that I read Phil’s being tossed on the moron pile as Charles banning him.
On second reading, though, that’s not quite as much of a slam dunk as it first looked, though, so please disregard.
The first post was most certainly not an ‘intro’ you didn’t post again for hours and when you did you just continued as before. And the second and third in response to outpouring of bile? Are you refering to my 1:06 post? Be careful to note when your posts were made before answering.
my first post: 12:40pm
your first response to that post, where you pretend to wonder what this all has to do with starving children in Africa: 1:06pm
my reponse to that: 2:03pm
your response: 2:12pm
my reponse: 2:28pm
If you think that 1 hour, 23 minutes is
a)well-characterized as “hours” or
b)such a significant gap that I deserve some sort of criticism
I don’t know what to say in response.
So, I’ve carefully noted when my posts were made. At first, it looked as if you were implying that I ‘responded’ before your insulting, whats-this-got-to-do-with-anything post. But that’s not the case, so your point- should there be one- is unclear.
2:39 You make the same error you accuse Charles of making with analogies.
This is exactly the sort of erroneous pedantry that makes talking with the likes of you or Charles challenging.
You see, analogies are useful. But they aren’t exact copies of the situation that they’re being compared with, so once an analogy is introduced it ought to be criticized by examining the similarities and differences.
Charles complained that the analogies weren’t identical. That isn’t a legitimate criticism of an analogy.
What I did was to compare the two situations and draw what I thought would’ve been a more appropriate analogy in the second. The goal of this was to illustrate that my new example and the original analogy were obviously far apart.
That is to say- analogies aren’t wrong just because they aren’t perfect. But they aren’t right just because they exist. If I had said “this isn’t right because I’ve never said anything bad about hilzoy” Id be guilty of Charles’s error.
But you don’t seem interested in the distinction, perhaps because you’re sole role on this thread has been to get Charles’s back. Maybe the problems that right-wingers experience at OW are now in part self-generated; you anticipate and magnify any hostility you see.
We could have had an interesting discussion about the differences and similarities between the two cases. Of course we couldn’t do that before, because this is the first time you bothered to lay out your position rather than snidely snark.
Again, other folks (eg Bruce) were able to deduce what I was talking about from the get-go. If you’re slow on the uptake, don’t blame me; you could’ve asked rather than going on your insulting rant. Again, I take responsibility for the initial tone, but you’re pretending that the initial comment was just “F#^% Charles” is not correct. Now, you *responded* to it as if it were, and things got uglier- but again, if you want to see one of the reasons things spiraled downwards, look in the mirror.
That’s my source of frustration now; from the get-go, my tone was off. But rather than asking me to tone it down or (since you didn’t bother to understand) ask what I meant by my comment, you started attacking. Heck, even Charles *understood* my point; even if he felt it was tangential, attacking, and a bad analogy, he knew what I meant, and responded.
I can take responsibility for my mistake, but now you’re off in la-la land trying to pretend Im a troll rather than examine your own behavior.
Slarti, I haven’t read new comments since yesterday morning, and I’ll get through them. The “jerkoff” was reference was to the person’s comments, not the person. That’s not “name calling”, it’s an opinion of a collection of verbiage the person has made. It’s a harsh opinion, but it doesn’t cross any lines. Had I referred to him as an unbending intolerant ideologue, then that would’ve been name calling. So your admonishment is duly noted and duly rejected, and quite frankly I’m a little surprised that you didn’t see the distinction.
So, let’s get this straight for everyone on how the posting rules work
OK:”Your post is pathetic and sad. It is filled with inane gibberish. It is worthless and beneath contempt.”
Not OK:”You are not always a nice person.”
Do I have that right?
PS For anyone who had trouble following along, my point is that allowing strongly pejorative comments about other people’s posts is a backdoor to personal criticism and attacks. My sense of the posting rules is that “Your comments are stupid” is not just bad bc it’s not advancing the discussion, it’s also bad bc it’s a personal attack, albeit via the fiction of attacking their words only.
Slarti: Not that I support summary moron-piling for those who disagree with me, Phil, but there is a nontrivial difference between Freedom of the Press and Freedom to Say Whatever You Like In Blog Comments.
The Super Bowl halftime show — and you may not be aware of this, so thank me later — is not actually a blog comment, but is in fact a television broadcast.
Charles:Phil, I don’t remember having said something about the “moron pile”. Maybe I did. But FTR, I never had the banning keys at Tacitus, so if you think that was a threat to ban, then you would be wrong. And what Slarti said.
If I were more clever than I am, I would give you a Karnak award, but rest assured that I thought nothing of the sort. I just thought it was an interesting reaction to what I, at least, at the time, thought was a legitimate question re: Nipplegate. That is to say, rather than answer the question and examine your premises, you — again, at the time — retreated into defensive hostility. Still, it was some time ago and I hardly care now. I just found it interesting at the time and thought it might have some relation to Carlton’s observations on your opinions about press freedom.
And this, Charles, is a line of argument that’s beneath you:
It’s the Internet equivalent of “I’m not touching you.” Collections of verbiage can’t be “jerkoffs”; “jerkoff comments” are, presumably, made by jerkoffs. Please at least own your own words.
The fact that you didn’t get to substance until the next day is uncontroverted. Are you conceeding it?
Is the 1:06 comment the one you are taking such deep offense to? You are amazingly thin-skinned for someone who insists on using such a sharp tongue. That comment is:
In the first four paragraphs I ask the questions you want me to ask. I show that your point is not clear and ask you to clarify it. You don’t bother until almost a day later, after much complaint.
Paragraphs 5 and 6(which I think is the one that set you off the deep end) shows extreme cases where raising a topic doesn’t explain why one thinks the topic is relevant or helpful to the discussion at hand.
The rest was an attempt to see how the ‘context’ raised was or was not important to the question. For the most part it looked unimportant. It would have been better perhaps in my 6th and 7th paragraphs to say something like:
I wanted to use something that was not obviously related to the discussion (to strongly illustrate that complaining about a lack of context is not remedied by merely providing information). But quoting random facts about Venezuala is the same effect.
“Maybe the problems that right-wingers experience at OW are now in part self-generated; you anticipate and magnify any hostility you see.”
I don’t think it is necessary to magnify, when your first three references to right wingers in this thread (and in three separate posts, not in one accidental slip in tone like you now suggest) were:
Like many of your statements, there is the slightest germ of truth in “Maybe the problems that right-wingers experience at OW are now in part self-generated”. Certainly I’ll cop to ‘in part’. But your tone is unceasingly a combination of dramatic, condescending, and outright insulting–the response TO YOU doesn’t require that.
The 1:06 comment was largely substantive (the substance of which you largely have ignored throughout the thread). The insulting part was not even intended as an insult, merely an illustration of the need to explain, and even if broadly drawn as insulsting is nothing compared to your first three references. So I find your complaint perplexing.
You end with “But rather than asking me to tone it down or (since you didn’t bother to understand) ask what I meant by my comment, you started attacking.”
I specifically asked you to clarify in my 1:06 comment. You didn’t until at least a day and 6 comments later. And for you to take the middle of the 1:06 comment as an attack, while your first 3 much more vicious comments aren’t, is inexplicable.
For anyone still interested in the actual topic of this post, here’s an article about Venezuelan media at Counterpunch. It seems more balanced than you might expect, given the political leanings of the website, but it is, as you’d expect, sympathetic to the Chavez side–
link
If I seem a little short-fused about this, it’s because Wu has been pulling this crap on at least two threads prior to this, starting with this post. It needs to end.
Those are also good examples of what Bruce was talking about above. It’s almost like you perceive this interchange as a bargaining encounter- if you start far enough away, you’ll end up where you wanted to.
For example, you surely *know* the case against RCTV by now. You may not agree with it, you may even think it untrue, but when you pretend that all they were accused of was showing some riots and not others- well, that’s not the case, and I find it very difficult to believe that you’ve read everything you have about Venezuela without knowing that.
It’s like you’ve leaped directly from what you wish were true or what you believe to be true to what you’re going to state as the facts of the situation. In the process, you spread misinformation to your readers, who aren’t privy to the facts that you’re eliding.
Why is this important? Look at hilzoy’s DDT thread- some bright people (eg OCSteve) had some bad information about DDT. When good people get bad info, they make bad decisions and support bad policies. So, I think I’ve got a responsibility to correct that sort of misrepresentation in a public place. Not for your sake- Im sure you’re already aware of what RCTV was accused of, even if you don’t want to admit it or talk about it.
I have no problem trying to change my tone, but Im certainly not going to stop pointing things like this out.
I’m having trouble with links. I’ll try again.
link
“You are amazingly thin-skinned for someone who insists on using such a sharp tongue.”
Interesting.
Sebastian, is there some thesis you’re trying to prove, that you’d like us all to take a vote on, or something? “Resolved, Carleton Wu is a troll,” or “Resolved, Charles and I have been wronged by nasty lefties who attack us for no good reason,” or, well, put it however you like. Can we cut to the chase? Because if your theory is that there’s a significant audience of ObWi readers eager to engage in close line readings of Carleton’s past comments, in an attempt to prove such a thesis, while it’s entirely possible that I’m utterly wrong, I’m a little doubtful of that theory.
And while I claim to speak for no one but myself, I’d personally like to see you cut to the chase, and then invest your energy, and admirable skills, in a topic of more general interest than your great anger with Carleton. Of course, since you also keep using me as an example of substanceless harassment of Charles, or somesuch, I certainly can’t claim to be free of bias or interest, myself, to be sure.
But if there’s a set of people eager to hear more “proofs” of the sort you’ve been providing in this last series of comments, perhaps now is the time for them to speak up, cheer you on, and give us all cause to better understand that this sort of thing is what ObWi is really supposed to be about.
Alternatively, perhaps you could consider summarizing — and taking a vote if you like, or not — putting forth a resolution of censure or condemnation of some of us, if you like — and then moving on.
Thanks for any consideration.
The 1:06 comment was largely substantive
If you require 13 paragraphs to say “Im not sure what you’re getting at or how this is relevant, please clarify”, then yes. Otherwise, no, not really.
Again, even Charles understood my point, although he disagreed with it. Only you ‘failed’ to see it, and were forced to respond with 13 paragraphs that can be boiled down to ‘wtf are you talking about? Africa and staving children?’
Apparently we’re not getting anywhere- you don’t want to face up to your part in escalating this, fine. Sleep tight.
Do I have that right?
Such is the culture of ObWi, Wu. I’ve read countless comments that fall under that “OK” column. While they may not be constructive or helpful, I don’t respond to them, and they don’t cross the line of the posting rules, unless a fella is doing it repeatedly ad nauseum. Phil himself has written things about past posts that are not far different from your “OK”
example.
Phil, a person can have a loving wife, great kids, go to church, be a great employee, say nary a contrary or inflammatory thing to anyone in the community, then step into the Internet and write sheer nonsense and vitriol. Having met and privately corresponded with various bloggers of various stripes, I’d like to think that I’m speaking from some level of experience. No matter what Carleton says to me in a thread (or you for that matter), it would be no surprise in real life that he is funny, loquacious, humble, mild-mannered, and well-esteemed among friends and family as an all-around good guy, etc. I don’t presume that a person who makes nasty and inflammatory comments is a nasty and inflammatory person.
Gary:
You wrote: “However, your post is so wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest, no mention of any genuine grievances of the rural and poor population, no mention of the historic lack of balance and political fairness in Venezuela before Chavez, no reference to the politicized nature, and anti-free-speech record of Globovision and other “opposition” tv stations, and on and on.”
Finding a generalized “considerable value” from further discussion is not at all the same as butressing the charge that the post was “wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest”.
None of the things which came later justified that. The fact that Venezuala has a rural and poor population with grievances certainly didn’t. That observation doesn’t obviously link to shutting down opposition stations at all. Chavez’s positioning as their alleged champion doesn’t alter the act Charles reported on any more than if he had been positioned as the champion of David Duke style racists.
The historic lack of fairness in Venezuala, doesn’t either. As Randy Paul pointed out, this is a departure even from the icky Venezuelan norm.
Reference to the politicized nature, and anti-free-speech record of Globovision and other “opposition” tv stations is an odd phrasing. The anti-free-speech record of Globovision and other “opposition” tv stations is unestablished even in the explicitly pro-Chavez links that Nell provided. The politicized nature of the stations is undisputed, and was mentioned by Charles as the reason why they were shut down.
Further information was interesting of course. I didn’t initially know that on April 9 through the 11th before the coup, Chavez attempted to order all the television stations in the country to continuously broadcast his propaganda.
But nothing that came out later contradicts what Reporters Without Borders wrote (and Charles quoted as the piece unifying his post): “Directly or indirectly, President Chávez now controls almost all the broadcast media. RCTV’s closures is not, as he would have people believe, a mere administrative measure. It is a political move designed to reinforce his hegemony over the news media.”
Nothing that came out later justified your attack of: “your post is so wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest…”
This was a post that was moderate in tone, avoided the rhetorical excess that you have deplored in the past, and which was modest in its conclusions. It avoided that which caused complaints about Charles in the past, yet you still gave as your very first reaction an extremely hard slap in the face.
“None of the things which came later justified that.”
“Nothing that came out later justified your attack of: ‘your post is so wildly off-balance, with no nod to context in the slightest…'”
“…yet you still gave as your very first reaction an extremely hard slap in the face.”
Sebastian, you’ve made your opinion on this entirely clear, over and over and over again, more times than I care to add up.
You are utterly entitled to your opinion of my opinion.
And I’m utterly entitled to my opinion. I do not require that you agree with the opinion I wrote of Charles’ post, and I do not contest your opinion.
But so far as I am aware, all that I need to “justify” my posting of that comment is that it is my opinion. If you feel that that that comment was a violation of the posting rules, please say so. If not, I believe you have made your own opinion clear. I repeat: do you have some further resolution you wish us all to vote on? What desire do you seek to now have fulfilled, and what is your point, by your continued repetition of your opinion of my opinion of Charles’ post?
You feel that my statement was “…an extremely hard slap in the face.” Noted. And? Is there a possible end-point to this topic anywhere on the horizon? I ask because, you know, you’ve been going on on this topic for five days in a row now, so I don’t feel I’m being precipitous in trying to draw you out as to what further goal you’re trying to accomplish, beyond repeating yet again your views on Carleton’s evil nature, and the horrifically offensively unjustified nature of my vicious and unjustified attack on Charles’ most excellent post.
Because I really do get that that’s your opinion. I’m willing to bet that most people get that.
“Apparently we’re not getting anywhere- you don’t want to face up to your part in escalating this, fine. Sleep tight.”
You keep using the idea of ‘escalation’ you began with a very nasty tone and very direct name-calling and maintained that throughout. There was no escalation. You were going full-bore from moment one.
And apparently your objection to my 1:06 post was that it was long winded, not that it was insulting to you. I’m certainly willing to admit to being unecessarily long-winded. My point, even though inartfully made, is that providing facts without bothering to explain why you believe them to be important is not providing context. Mentioning al-Zawraa did not provide obvious context to the situation of why Chavez should shut down a television station and why he should threaten another one. (Especially since the charges of coup-support are weak in any case, but NOT equally strong against both stations). The context it provided in trying to attack Charles for being a hypocrite was obvious. How YOU THOUGHT it applied to the Chavez situation was not. That is the difference between attack commenting and discussion. You neatly avoided commiting yourself to a position that could actually be argued for almost an entire day while poisoning the well all along.
I’m still mulling my own situation, but in the meantime, I strongly urge everyone still following this at all to re-read the whole thread, starting with Charles’ post and actually reading each comment.
Calling something an ‘opinion’ doesn’t make it a ‘non-attack’. I could publically make all sorts of unflattering statements about my opinion of someone’s character or argument, and I might still be attacking them. If you are going to retreat purely to the “it was purely my opinion of the post” than your attacks were unjustified attacks.
And this retreat to “was it a violation of posting rules?” is obnoxious. If we are forced to get rules-lawyerly about it we’ve completely lost obsidianwings.
If you want to know why we have trouble recruiting and keeping people like Mr. Olmsted, I’m trying to show you. He left before the military made him stop blogging and I practically begged him to stay.
It isn’t because of the left-wing attack trolls like Don Quixote or Jade. They can be ignored and if they get too pushy, banned. It is because the ‘moderately left’ members like you think that it is appropriate to attack even moderate and non-reaching posts.
When I first started posting here, I thought the best way to deal with it was to ignore it. I figured: ‘these people generally have good faith arguments, so let it slide’. But eventually they began to multiply. So I tried another tactic: treat the arguments as serious. Sometimes that worked, or it at least got to whatever was really bugging them. But then the number vastly increased, such that on nearly every post you could count on one of the regular lefties to make a hard jab even on posts that didn’t come close to warranting it. So I started calling people on it. But I hated calling people out on the left because it had the appearance of objecting to style on the basis of a real objection to substance. So intially I encouraged others on the left to engage the arguments with “is this common” type arguments, but that was perceived as unfairly lumping people together. And from time to time I would let the snide part of me react, and that didn’t help either.
I realize that it is probably hopeless for obsidianwings to return to the interesting cross-pollination of left-right discussions that we had at the beginning. The only reason I’m on here at all anymore is that I hate to see a thing I loved die and I’m ridiculously stubborn trying to hang on to it while there is the slightest shred of hope left (I’m sure that the stubborness comes as a complete shock to you).
If I were invited to come on now and post, I certainly would not choose to do so. The only reason I have a thick enough skin for it now is because my stubborness about abandoning it completely doesn’t let me just let the whole thing go. (And now I’m stupdily tearing up while typing, argh.)
I read this post from Charles with worry because his posts seem to bring out what I hate most in the ObWi comments. But when I finished the post I thought “he didn’t draw unwarranted conclusions, he didn’t make rhetorical flights, he kept things to the facts, this is a good thing”.
But the comments didn’t reflect that. You and Anderson had already gone into attack mode. It was just so completely unnecessary.
Oh but I will note that a major failing was not banning bril earlier. He certainly didn’t help the conversation any.
How YOU THOUGHT it applied to the Chavez situation was not.
You’re the only person who’s claimed it wasn’t clear.
And apparently your objection to my 1:06 post was that it was long winded, not that it was insulting to you.
I was ready to leave it alone, but I have to mention that I’ve said the opposite several times. How that makes it apparent that I mean the opposite in your mind is a mystery.
Perhaps it will help if you are made to understand that “long-winded” and “insulting” are not mutually exclusive. In fact, endlessly belaboring a point can be insulting.
Again, you can continue to twist things around so nothing is your fault. But have the decency not to claim I said something when I’ve clearly said the opposite. It’s almost like you’re trying to bait me to keep this up so you can finish working off your guilty conscience.
In that case, then by all means let’s keep going. Id hate to think of you taking out all of this hostility and frustration on the mailman.
“I strongly urge everyone still following this at all to re-read the whole thread, starting with Charles’ post and actually reading each comment.”
Umm, no thanks. Gary can’t be bothered to be substantive in the second comment, Anderson is past civility in the fourth, then it’s a mess.
My two cents: this blog tilts strongly left now, and it behooves those of us on the tilted side to do our utmost not to worsen the situation by harsh rhetoric, even when it would ordinarily be justified. I think everybody here knows how to disagree substantively and constructively – why not do so? If poster or commenter Z annoys you to the extent that you can’t disagree in that way, let it go – someone else will take up your side of the issue. Argue the post, not the poster, or this site will really be just hilzoy.blogspot.com, yet another excellent wonky lefty site read by lefties.
RF, ditto.
I’ve actually read the whole thread – more fool me! – and want to avoid, if I can, taking sides on the substantive issues AND most of the rhetorical skirmishing . . .
. . . except to make one point, specifically for Charles. Perhaps because I (like Gary?) have done a lot of editing, I try to be sensitive to nuance, which is useful when the discussion is tone.{*} And I have never seen “jerkoff” used as an adjective on its own; its immediate connotation, therefore, is “something said/done by a jerkoff [person].” (Contrast “foolish,” which is generally understood NOT to imply, necessarily, that it is something said/done by a fool.)
IMHO, therefore, to argue that this is not “personal” is tin-eared at best, disingenuous at worst. If I were the Great Banner Of The People (and thank the lord I’m not, sir!), it would not earn you a ban, but probably a warning. More to the point, since you are one of the GBOTPs, it behooves you to avoid such language, even when provoked (which you surely were). Remember: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.
My opinion, as always, is worth exactly what you paid for it.
{*} E.g., in the MS I’ve just been refereeing, one author marred an otherwise acceptable paper by a sideswipe at two intellectual opponents, otherwise off-topic, implying strongly that they were racists, though not directly calling them that. (“[Scholars] . . . from A [who really was a racist!] to [X] and [Y] would not lack in reminding us about the intimate link between one’s race and one’s capacity . . .” – when, so far as I know, neither X nor Y has ever used any such language or categories.) I recommended to the press that they not include this paper unless this phrase – possibly libelous – was removed.
dr. ngo,
“If I were the Great Banner Of The People”
You would likely be hanging in the Great Hall of the People.
Hmmm, this seems a tacit admission that unwarranted conclusions, rhetorical flights, and fact-free commentary have been common ingredients of Charles’ posts in the past. I agree that he’s gotten much better in those respects lately, but after spending much of his history here pushing liberal’s buttons, it’s unsurprising that people read his posts with an eye for that. It doesn’t help that Charles isn’t exactly averse to the personal attack himself, as in the “jerkoff” comment above, followed by his utterly risible defense of same. I’m not saying that Charles sucks and is ruining the site, just that it’s silly to judge the reaction to him without taking that history into account.
On a related note, “liberal commenters suck and are ruining the site” arguments are equally tiresome. As Gary noted above, the onus would seem to be on conservatives to bring more conservative voices on board. I tend to agree that things are tough on conservative front-pagers with the commentariat being pretty strongly left-ish, so any prospective new right-leaning poster is likely to feel much as Andrew did/does. But where are the conservative commenters to balance out the liberals? Without more of them the comments are always going to seem like a pile-on to the conservative wing. I can count the regular righty commenters here on one hand. Hell, my grandpa could count them on one hand, and a few episodes of mixing beer and power tools have left him with a severe case of innumeracy. I read enough righty blogs to know that most righties aren’t exactly shrinking violets, afraid to mix it up with the nasty mean lefties here. If the conservatives among you can persuade some of your compatriots to comment here, maybe that would help to make the environment more congenial for righty front-pagers. Otherwise I think we keep sliding down that slippery slope towards the echo chamber.
If the conservatives among you can persuade some of your compatriots to comment here, maybe that would help to make the environment more congenial for righty front-pagers.
I’ve tried before without much luck. I’m not sure why. I think maybe folks who would tend to comment also tend to have their usual hangouts. So while I’ve probably encouraged a few people to at least check it out and maybe lurk a bit it never seemed to “take”.
And frankly as cranky as it’s been around here of late I wouldn’t pester anyone to come by right now. Kind of like having your friends show up at the front door when your family is yelling and screaming and crying at each other in full meltdown mode. If things chill out maybe I’ll try to round some up later in the week.
“If I were the Great Banner Of The People”
You would likely be hanging in the Great Hall of the People.
Believe it or not, that’s kinda what I had in mind (and why I was not anxious for the job):
rilkefan: Umm, no thanks. Gary can’t be bothered to be substantive in the second comment, Anderson is past civility in the fourth, then it’s a mess.
Huh. Pretty thankless work, this commenting business. I haven’t been around here all that much lately, but this is a topic on which I had something to contribute and believe that I did. But I think I’ll join Bruce in taking a break for another good while.
yet another excellent wonky lefty site read by lefties
rilkefan, I’m assuming that was just shorthand, yes? You realize Hilzoy’s not a leftist or even a lefty, and that this isn’t a left site. Everything to the left of von isn’t “left”, and certainly isn’t “the left.”
This is a site, firmly within the mainstream spectrum of opinion in this country, that leans heavily to the liberal side of that spectrum.
I’d like to second the, er, second part of Nell’s comment.
And this is what happens when you start talking about Chavez.
THE END.
Nell, I had in fact written a sentence pointing to your comments above as an example to follow, but I reread your second sentence above and decided it would be complicated to add a caveat for it.
Note that I didn’t say “leftist” – if you have some ideological paradigm in mind where it matters whether one is a liberal or progressive or on the left in view of which hilzoy is to the left of center in the great majority of her views but not of the left, then that wasn’t so much shorthand as simple ignorance. I would for example find it perfectly natural for her to win a Koufax for best lefty blogger. [And I certainly think of von as well right of center.] I take it you mean by “the left” left-of-center people with views outside the mainstream?
“I take it you mean by “the left” left-of-center people with views outside the mainstream?”
I think that’s what she means. It’s a common distinction. “Liberals” are within the American mainstream–Edwards is a liberal. “Leftists” are outside the American mainstream–Kucinich is a leftist.
The Nation straddles the border between liberal and leftist. The Progressive is leftist, Z Magazine and Counterpunch are far leftist (though Alexander Cockburn in the name of idiotic contrarianism takes rightwing positions on occasion, most recently on global warming.) TNR is at best liberal (more like neoliberal and sometimes they pride themselves on their contrarianism so much they end up being conservative). The American Prospect is liberal.
Ron Paul’s statements putting some of the blame on US foreign policy for our terrorism troubles were praised by lefties–lefties and some libertarians see eye-to-eye on the evils of American imperialism. Liberals tend to shy away from such talk, or at least the “serious” Presidential candidates do, in both parties.
To be fair, that bill was rewritten without the odd provisions against chemtrails and mind-control lasers, or whatever.
Well, Kucinich is also a bit peculiar, though maybe in leftish sorts of ways.
“Edwards is a liberal.”
I still think of him as a social centrist with more of a populist than a leftist POV on trade and poverty, and a current move to the left since Obama and Clinton are filling up the centrist liberal niches.
I don’t know what Edwards really is, but he’s painting himself as more antiwar than HRC or even Obama, and he has that rich and poor rhetoric going on (which I approve of, or think I would, if I were paying closer attention). So he seems like the most liberal of the top three, or that’s my impression. Reality may be different.
OC,
No reason to wonder any longer… Nell answers your question.
Someone appears to be having a problem finding their left. How can one lean heavily and still be in the mainstream of any spectrum?
Is this the voice of moderation? I think not. The liberal posters are no where near moderate… they lean heavily to the liberal side of the spectrum.
The conservative posters are far more moderate. Even Charles is closer to the center than the regular posters here.
I recently had a conversation with a Canadian. He was happy that Wolfowitz was getting his due. He kept going on and on about how the money he got his girlfriend was tax-free. “It was tax-free. Can you believe that?” I sat there wondering, “Who cares? What’s the difference between a $150,000 straight up and $200,000 tax free? Either it was wrong or right. The fact it was tax-free was irrelevant.”
If that same conversation was at Obsidian Wings and someone like Charles ignored the tax-free part the entire thread would be about how Charles’ post was stupid because he left out the tax-free part. They would act as if it would have all been good if only it had been taxed. The right or wrong aspect of the post would be irrelevant. The minor detail would be the focus.
That’s what happens if the poster isn’t heavily in the liberal spectrum. Who wants to get attacked over irrelevant details?
There is no room for dissent. Von and Sebastion both complain about this. Ironically, the posters here behave in the exact way they believe George Bush does. The stifling of dissent starts at Obsidian Wings, not the Whitehouse.
There is no reasoning with some who are so extreme, but believe that extreme is near the middle.
Bril was banned because he wonders why Hilzoy is constantly attacking Bush and not the enemies of the United States.
Is that really such an unreasonable question to ask? It is at Obsidian Wings.
Wow, that was like some hitherto unobserved double play. Unnamed Canadian to the commentators at ObWi to Bril. I’m thinking 2-4-7.
Well, we’ve got to fit Karnak into that play there somewhere. Who else would know exactly what we {*} would say if Charles posted on Wolfowitz and left out the “tax-free” bit?!
{*} We actually doesn’t include me, because I actually know what I would say about this burning issue.
Nothing. Nada. Nil. Zilch.
I simply don’t care about the tax-free bit. Maybe I didn’t read the fine print on the back of my “Liberal” card.
Or maybe – just maybe – it’s actually Faux Karnak?!
Or even Karnak’s evil twin brother, Skippy?
Whoever or whatever grungeboy is (again I ask – who was that masked man?) he has certainly caused me to think. But probably not what he was hoping I would think.
That’s what I would think, too. I have no idea why it would be a “liberal” idea to think otherwise.
Hey, look, an actual victory for press freedom:
Cue Nelson Muntz: “Ha ha!”
As Gary noted above, the onus would seem to be on conservatives to bring more conservative voices on board.
Like with OCSteve, I wouldn’t take that onus, Larv. The tone and tenor has to change before new conservatives would step into these waters. The only other solution is an infusion of a gang of conservatives. I keep coming back to those words in the banning policy: “Unlike many other blogs, the success of Obsidian Wings depends upon a balance of authors and a balance of commenters. When the site begins to falter, it’s almost always due to an unbalance one way or the other.”
I am not sure about conservative posters being necessary, but conservative commenters are needed. Taking away the trolls, there are only 4-5 regulars from the conservative side.
Unfortuanetly there are some from the other side that appear to enjoy the piling on.
A part of the problem is that on many of the issues today (torture, Iraq, abridgement of rights) there is a lot of similarity of views where the differences are in the details. I think this brings out the more emphatic types of responses when there is a perceived difference.
In terms of recation to CB, I do think some of it is knee-jerk. Even Seb and Slarti and to a lesser extent von get the same reception. It is unfortunate, particularly when there is a post like this one which, on the whole, is just a straight forward reporting. IS there context that can flesh it out? Yes and that was provided. Can legitimate comparisons to other situations be made? Yes, definitely.
Does that require personal attacks on one’s good faith (from either side)? No.
Charles, I think it’s important in this discussion to separate political position from tone. ‘Moderate’ and ‘balanced’ can apply to both qualities.
It would be wrong (and impossible) to expect commenters to change their political perspective and where they stand on particular issues. It’s absolutely fine to insist that commenters of all stripes moderate their tone, avoid personalizing discussion, etc.
In this context, a ‘gang’ is probably not the best recommendation for increasing the number of conservative posters — the connotations of uniformity and thuggish behavior are exactly what’s not wanted.
Replace “gang” with “group”, Nell, because that’s really what I meant.
This thread is likely nearing the onset of rigor mortis. But before you zip up the body bag, Charles, I suggest you (and others who are interested) check out this this American Prospect article, which provides some additional–ahem–context relating to the shut down.